编者按：本文是《大西洋月刊》对生成式AI行业持续调查报道“AI守望者”的一部分。
在竭力维持系统在线运转的同时，AI公司正在让其他所有人付出高昂代价。ChatGPT和Claude等大语言模型对资源的需求极大，以至于科技公司可能正在购买全球70%的高端计算机内存，导致供应短缺。其结果是，计算机内存和存储的价格飞涨：两年前我为了报道工作以每块350美元购买的硬盘，两周前查看时已涨到800美元，如今更是缺货。部分笔记本电脑的价格上涨了多达50%，而低价位电脑受到的冲击最为严重。根据一项预测，价格亲民的入门级电脑可能会“在2028年前消失”。内存短缺预计还将持续数年。
这些内存正被投入数据中心，科技公司正以惊人的速度扩建数据中心。他们计划在未来几年内将美国数据中心的总容量扩大八倍。这些场所的电力需求已经如此巨大，以至于一些公司正在改造喷气发动机来为其供电。
问题并不仅仅在于AI被如此广泛或快速地部署。其他计算机技术也曾经历过类似的大规模增长，却没有引发如此严重的电力激增或计算机组件短缺：如今，视频和音乐在全球范围内流媒体播放，每天占据着数万亿字节的互联网流量；智能手机的繁荣需要制造数十亿台设备，这些设备如今正在传输海量数据；数十亿台家用设备也已成为物联网的一部分；而整个行业都已将其业务迁移至云端软件——这些软件并非托管在云端，而是托管在数据中心里。
Editor’s note: This work is part of AI Watchdog , The Atlantic ’ s ongoing investigation into the generative-AI industry.
As they scramble to keep their systems online, AI companies are making things expensive for the rest of us. Large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude are so resource-hungry that tech companies may be purchasing 70 percent of the world’s supply of high-end computer memory, causing a shortage. As a result, the prices of computer memory and storage are skyrocketing: Hard drives that I bought for my reporting two years ago for $350 each were $800 when I checked two weeks ago, and are now out of stock. The prices of some laptops have gone up as much as 50 percent, and low-cost computers are being hit the hardest. Affordable entry-level computers may “disappear by 2028” according to one forecast. And the memory shortage is expected to continue for years.
The memory is being put into data centers, which tech firms are expanding at incredible speed. They are planning to multiply total U.S.-data-center capacity by a factor of eight over the next few years. The demand for electricity at these sites is already so great that some companies are repurposing jet engines to power them.
The problem is not simply that AI is being deployed so widely or quickly. Other computer technologies have seen similarly massive growth without triggering such a large spike in electricity or a shortage of computer components: Video and music are now streamed around the globe, accounting for many terabytes of internet traffic daily; the smartphone boom required the manufacturing of billions of devices that are now transferring huge amounts of data; billions of household devices are also now part of the Internet of Things; and whole industries have moved their operations to cloud software, which is hosted not in the sky but in, yes, data centers.