5.1 - Energy

Artificial Intelligence Policy

🧠 Think:

• How do we manage the massive energy demands of AI?

📖 Read:

• Chen, 2025. “How much energy will AI really consume? The good, the bad, and the unknown” Nature
• Stover, 2024. “AI goes nuclear” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

🌐 Browse:

• Ars Technica, “Can we make AI less power-hungry? These researchers are working on it.”
• The Economist, “How safe is nuclear energy?”
• Mandler, 2024. “Three Mile Island nuclear plant will reopen to power Microsoft data centers”
• Erdenesanaa, 2024. “A.I. Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country” NYTimes
• Goldman Sachs, “Is nuclear energy the answer to AI data centers’ power consumption?”
• Bacquero, “The Energy Footprint of Humans and Large Language Models”

📚 Additional Resources:

• Crawford, 2022. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale.

📝 Submit:

• Discussion question to course chat

TipTip

• “📖 Read”, “🎧 Listen”, and/or “📺 Watch” items are required content for the day, and should be read/heard/watched before class on that day.
• “🌐 Browse” items should be briefly looked at but do not need to be read deeply unless you want to
• “📚 Additional Resources” do not need to be looked at; they are there to serve, if useful, as further references for your debates, final projects, and general edification later.