Artificial intelligence is often celebrated as the engine of progress, the spark that ignites a more efficient, automated, intelligent future. But behind this dazzling light is a digital flame that burns and consumes. As in the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods, we too have ignited something immense. Only this time, the price is not just mythical: it is environmental, real, measurable in watts, CO₂ and silent Terawatt-hours.
Every single question addressed to an Ai is like tossing a lit match into a room full of oxygen. It seems like nothing, but multiply it by billions of interactions each day. A simple ChatGPT response can consume nearly ten times as much energy as a classic Google search. And the numbers are only growing, driven by the thirst for power of new models and the race for algorithmic supremacy.
According to the International Energy Agency, by 2026 data centers will come to consume as much energy as an entire industrialized country like Germany. And that's not a dystopian movie scenario: it's a curve we're already on. IDC estimates that AI-related consumption alone will exceed 146 Terawatt-hours by 2027. A jump of 44.7 percent each year. A growing, voracious hunger, a digital flame that never dies down.
Some look to nuclear power as a buffer solution. Others point to renewable and hardware optimization. But whichever way, one point remains: we are powering an extraordinary idea with a machine that never sleeps. And every response we get has a price we don't read on the screen, but that the Earth is already paying.
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Like Prometheus chained to his guilt, we too are in danger of being tied to a technology that eludes us. We wanted the fire of the gods, and we succeeded. But now we need consciousness, we need measure. It is not enough for Ai to be powerful. It must be sustainable.
Only if we can rewrite the rules of this digital flame can we transform it from a threat to a promise. Or we risk finding ourselves in the dark, consumed by the same light we had turned on to see further.
But perhaps something is already changing. From China comes a signal that could rewrite the rules of the game: DeepSeek, a new language model that promises advanced performance with drastically reduced power consumption. A true silent revolution. While the West chases the brute power of increasingly hungry models, someone has started betting on efficiency.
It is a step change that could shift the geopolitical and technological balance: less energy, more intelligence. Less waste, more strategy. If DeepSeek delivers on its promises, it will not just be a matter of speed, but of vision. And perhaps, for the first time, innovation might come not by power, but by size, and perhaps we can finally quench this insatiable digital flame.
Read also: Who Signs the Art of AI? The 5 Truths No One Wants to Say
"To all living beings I have given fire...and with it all art."
- Aeschylus, Prometheus Unchained
