ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Behind the story: Google has just agreed to buy 3.6 gigawatts of electricity.
Not gigabytes. Gigawatts.
Artificial intelligence may feel like a weightless digital technology, but its rapid growth increasingly depends on some very physical things: power stations, transmission lines, substations, batteries, cooling and water.
In the United States, technology companies are beginning to secure generating capacity of their own. In Spain and Portugal, abundant renewable electricity is helping attract a huge expansion of data centres — just eighteen months after the Iberian blackout demonstrated how complex and vulnerable a modern electricity system can be.
Meanwhile, the IMF sees two forces colliding: an energy supply shock and an enormous AI investment boom.
SignsWatch follows the connections and asks whether one of the fastest-moving technologies we've ever created is becoming dependent on some of the slowest infrastructure we know how to build.
