How does, say, natural gas power formulaic emails to your coworkers, college essay cheats, or images of the pope in a puffy coat?

The answer has to do with the far-flung process that triggers every time someone taps ChatGPT or Google Gemini. It likely involves one or more of hundreds of nondescript buildings scattered throughout the world and loaded with racks of servers. Those behemoth structures have to be powered up 24/7 along with their water-intensive cooling systems, which require a steady flow of massive amounts of electricity.

And as businesses flock to build out a new generation of unprecedentedly compute-hungry AI systems—they’re called large language models for a reason—that power consumption threatens to overwhelm the country’s already-stressed electricity grid. A recent Goldman Sachs report found that the energy needed to power new data centers will grow 160% by 2030. On average, a ChatGPT query requires nearly 10x the electricity of a Google search, Goldman said.

So what can utilities and data center operators do to keep this voracious appetite from hobbling grids? Paradoxically, part of the answer might also lie in AI, albeit a different variety from the chatbots and image generators currently synonymous with the tech.

“There are a lot of opportunities, particularly around AI, to make grid operation more efficient and better,” said Heiko Claussen, co-CTO of industrial software provider Aspen Technology, which works on grid modernization efforts.

Keep reading here.—PK

SVB’s outlook and analysis of the trends shaping the innovation economy is back with their H2 2024 State of the Markets report.

Explore the factors driving more capital flow to US startups this year than in 26 of the last 30 years, despite US VC investment falling below previous peaks. While many companies are finding it harder to raise, the best are making it happen—led by those capitalizing on the boom in AI.

Discover the dynamics at play as SVB breaks down the uneven recovery and the process of recalibration across venture-backed company operations, fundraising, investments, and exits.

Learn more.

Do your homework.

That’s the message Jay Collins, SVP and general manager of the energy transition at global commerce platform WEX, has for commercial fleet operators who are contemplating going electric.

WEX, which helps manage commercial payments via software solutions, recently commissioned a study from Frost & Sullivan on commercial EV adoption. The results suggest that, overwhelmingly, fleet operators are planning to go electric—but fully electric fleets are still a long way away.

While US retail consumers are still wary about going electric, the picture is a bit different for commercial customers.

The survey found that 80% of global commercial fleet leaders plan for at least 25% of their fleets to be electric by 2030, while 42% said they expect at least half of their fleets to be EVs by then.

“It’s an indication to me that those who are doing it, and doing it right, see continued conversion ahead,” Collins told us. “It’s not about if or when. It’s about how best to get it done.”

Keep reading here.—JG

The effect AI could have on particular jobs has been a key question of the generative AI era.

A team of researchers attempted to comprehensively answer this question by having human annotators rate tens of thousands of tasks across more than 1,000 occupations based on their exposure to large language models. Their paper, published recently in Science, found very few examples of jobs that could be mostly performed by AI, though the authors said the number has the potential to balloon with time.

The team, which included researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Oxford, and OpenAI, concluded that broad generative AI could perform more than half the tasks of just 1.8% of jobs in its current state. However, when accounting for potential domain-specific software developments that could complement AI capabilities, the number could jump to as much as 46% in the future, the authors wrote.

White-collar danger? Unlike previous waves of automation technology that tended to displace lower-wage workers first, generative AI is more likely to affect higher-wage jobs with greater levels of preparation necessary, from lawyers and pharmacists to scientists and technologists, the study found. This is consistent with the findings of other studies that have shown office workers to be more at risk.

Keep reading here.—PK

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Usually, we write about the business of tech. Here, we highlight the *tech* of tech.

Press start: Games have long been part of being human, and it’s just as true in the digital age. How are we keeping in touch with our friends? By dropping our Wordle scores into the group chat. How are we learning a second language and nurturing our perfectionistic sides? Duolingo, of course. But now, games are being used not just to provide entertainment: They’re aiming to get you to part with your hard-earned cash. Don’t miss Marketing Brew’s writeup on “ad gamification.”

Harmony in the group chat: Good news for iPhone users in group chats with Android devotees: Some wildly overdue updates are included in iOS 18 that will finally allow the green texters in your life to fully participate in the group chat. The Verge has the details.