The latest warning from experts about what is to come: the next drought will not be about waterINFORMATION
Global warming and lack of rain have accustomed to the word drought. Water scarcity is a current problem very important that affects many levels of everyone’s daily life. Since ancient times, concern for essential resources for life, such as water, has kept empires and humans in suspense. But there is a type of drought that citizens of the past did not have among their concerns: the electricity drought.
Electricity is a resource so useful that it has become essential. Without electricity, we would return to customs and a way of life very different from today. The introduction and proliferation of use of electricity in Spain It started to late nineteenth century. After dozens of years in which society has become accustomed to electricity, it has now become an essential resource to carry out most of our tasks.
Returning to our current era, the boom of the Artificial intelligence and the need for complex next-generation microchips have sparked a debate among industry experts about a possible shortage of electricity and electronic components in the future. Precisely, this topic had a lot of weight at the Bosch Connected World conference on AI and digital commerce that was held in Berlin at the end of February. The technology entrepreneur and owner of Tesla and X, Elon Muskclosed the conference showing his concern about the energy panorama of the future.
Elon Musk’s forecast
“The next there will be a shortage of electricity. “They won’t be able to find enough electricity to run all the chips.” This is the controversial warning with which the South African businessman responded in the question and answer session that closed the ‘Bosch Connected World’ conference. Musk explains that the recent demand for electronic components and new Artificial Intelligence technologies can put in check to the energy ecosystem of the future.
Regarding Artificial Intelligence, Musk added: “I have never seen a technology advance faster than this. AI computing going online appears to be increasing by a factor of 10 every six months. Obviously, that can’t continue at such a high rate forever, or it will exceed the mass of the universe, but I’ve never seen anything like it, the chip fever is greater That any Golden fever that has ever existed.”
Musk also addressed humanity’s need for voltage transformers. “The limitations in AI computation are very predictable… A year ago, the shortage was chips; neural network chips. Then, it was very easy to predict that the next shortage will be voltage step down transformers. You have to feed these things with energy. “If you have 100-300 kilovolts coming out of a power grid and it has to be stepped down to six volts, that’s a significant reduction.”
A new type of drought
The shortage of electricity, semiconductors and silicon chips could be as much or more devastating than water drought. Elon Musk dares to predict that the electricity drought will become a reality in a few years and that soon we will begin to notice the beginnings of the shortage. “Next year you will see that you simply will not be able to find enough electricity to run all the chips.”
“I think that the simultaneous growth of cars electric and AIwhich need electricity and voltage transformers, is creating a huge demand for electrical equipment and electric power generation”, Elon Musk has admitted. Being the CEO of Tesla, one of the largest electric vehicle company in the world, he has already begun to make the change to the hydrogen vehicle as a precaution against possible electricity drought in the future. This year he announced that they would begin the transition from electric to hydrogen vehicles.
It is clear that The future holds many challenges for us to face.. Elon Musk’s predictions may be true or pure speculation. What is a fact is that technological development advances exponentially and incredible speed. Modern electronic devices perform more complex tasks and require more and more electronic components. Definitely, if technological advance continues along its current path, and global warming continues to increase, in Many types of drought will coexist in the future.
