A data centre is a building packed with racks of servers, plus the power supplies, networking and cooling that keep them running. When you use a chatbot, your request is answered by chips in a data centre, often hundreds of miles away.
AI data centres are hungrier than older ones because AI chips draw a lot of power and run hot. Berkeley Lab found US data centres used about 4.4% of the country’s electricity in 2023, and the IEA expects global data centre electricity use to roughly double by 2030.