DATACENTERS ai boom
page 2 / 4
OpenAI released Jukebox, the first large-scale model to generate songs, in 2020. Jukebox allowed for raw audio in different genres and styles.
In 2024, AI models capable of producing high-fidelity music became available to the public. In June 2024, AI-generated music services Udio and Suno AI were sued by a group of major record labels over copyright infringement concerns.
In March 2020, 15.ai was founded. 15.ai allowed for audio deepfakes. Artificially generated vocals can be generated with tools such as ElevenLabs, which allows for the creation of vocals from any audio. This allows for any celebrity or politician who has voice clips on the internet to be subject to audio deepfakes for both speech and singing. The voices of politicians, such as Joe Biden, have been used for fake robocalls to voters to attempt to manipulate elections.
== Impact ==
=== Energy ===
Electricity consumed by hardware used for AI has increased demands on power grids, which has led to prolonged use of fossil fuel power plants which would otherwise have been deactivated.
Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have all invested in existing or proposed nuclear power plants to meet these demands. In September 2024, Microsoft signed a deal with Constellation Energy to purchase power from a reactor at Three Mile Island which had been shut down in 2019. The reactor is set to reopen in 2028 to provide power to Microsoft's data centers. The reactor is next to the unit which caused the worst nuclear power accident in US history in 1979.
=== Cultural ===
According to a report from Pew Research, opinions on AI are divided, with most Americans expressing concerns over a lack of control over AI and potential negative effect on human creativity. Nikolova & Angrisani (2025) found that people are specifically distrustful of the use AI in personal relationships, while being more accepting of its use in medicine, such as for creating new antibiotics.
=== Business and economy ===
Some economists have been optimistic about the potential of the current wave of AI to boost productivity and economic growth. Notably, Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson, in a series of articles has argued for an "AI-powered Productivity Boom" and a "Coming Productivity Boom". At the same time, others like Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon remain more pessimistic. Brynjolfsson and Gordon have made a formal bet, registered at long bets, about the rate of productivity growth in the 2020s, to be resolved at the end of the decade.
Big Tech companies view the AI boom as both opportunity and threat; Alphabet's Google, for example, realized that ChatGPT could be an innovator's dilemma-like replacement for Google Search. The company merged DeepMind and Google Brain, a rival internal unit, to accelerate its AI research.
The market capitalization of Nvidia, whose GPUs are in high demand to train and use generative AI models, rose to over US$3.3 trillion, making it the world's largest company by market capitalization as of 19 June 2024 and became the first company to reach US$4 trillion on 9 July 2025 and subsequently US$5 trillion on 29 October later that same year.
In 2023, San Francisco's population increased for the first time in years, with the boom cited as a contributing factor.
Machine learning resources, hardware or software can be bought and licensed off-the-shelf or as cloud platform services. This enables wide and publicly available uses, spreading AI skills. Over half of businesses consider AI to be a top organizational priority and to be the most crucial technological advancement in many decades.
Across industries, generative AI tools are becoming widely available through the AI boom and are increasingly used in businesses across regions. A main area of use is data analytics. Seen as an incremental change, machine learning improves industry performance. Businesses report AI to be most useful in increased process efficiency, improved decision-making and strengthening of existing services and products. Through adoption, AI has already positively influenced revenue generation in multiple business functions. Businesses have experienced revenue increases of up to 16%, mainly in manufacturing, risk management and research and development.
AI and generative AI investments have been increasing with the boom, increasing from $18 billion in 2014 to $119 billion in 2021. Most notably, the share of generative AI investments was around 30% in 2023. Further, generative AI businesses have seen considerable venture capital investments even though regulatory and economic outlooks remain in question.
Tech giants capture the bulk of the monetary gains from AI and act as major suppliers to or customers of private users and other businesses.
With the introduction of AI, there has been an exponential rise in production for businesses. It's expected that workers could use resources provided by artificial intelligence to boost their productivity. As many small businesses don't use AI, it's believed that if it's adopted by more businesses, the whole work structure could be changed, as many tasks will be automated by AI.