The Energy Ceiling of Information

//Google “Landauer’s principle” It takes energy to create and destroy every bit of data. The Earth has a finite amount of energy that can be generated and harnessed. Combined with needing to support life, there is a hard ceiling on how much energy can be devoted to data. As AI systems generate more and more data, the energy required to support that data creation is increasing rapidly.

//Seth Lloyd of MIT wrote the book on this //See: “Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation” (Nature, 2000) Before AI, based on the current rate of data creation, the best guess on when humans won’t be able to harness enough energy on earth to create any more bits was about 2045. With AI accelerating data creation, that date could be much closer. //Can we ask Seth for a recalc?

The large AI firms are already saying power is going to be a problem. Private equity is investing heavily in power generation just to keep up with AI demand. Communities are shunning data centers because of the strain on local power grids and water consumption. Orbital data centers will help, but we’re very quickly approaching that point and those are still in conceptualization stages. //Where do I sign up to be a orbital data center engineer?