Australia’s two major parties are divided over nuclear energy and the future mix of the nation’s power sources. But they are missing Australia’s opportunity to power the next generation of AI models. During the election campaign, the Liberals advocated adopting nuclear power as an alternative green energy source for Australia, especially using small-scale nuclear power generators. Labor criticised the plan as being too vague and the technology as too immature, and said they will continue to rely on fossil fuels to smooth the transition to green technology by 2050. Although small-scale nuclear power technology has been proven in many submarines cruising around the world—and some are questioning if Labor’s plans will even get Australia to net zero by 2050—we are missing out on a massive national security and economic opportunity for Australia. The training of AI models requires significant power. OpenAI’s GPT-4 was estimated to use 50 times more electricity to train than its GPT-3 model. This trend is likely to continue for frontier models. By 2030, power consumption by data centres is set to double, and AI is forecast to consume more than 9 percent of total US power generation.
For long-term AI ambitions, Australia should think nuclear | The Strategist
