One of the things coming through at this stage of the project is how difficult it is to maintain a vibrant and plural AI ecosystem, or set of ecosystems, and enable different approaches to development. The dominance of the big labs and preoccupation with AGI means that most “responsible” efforts get distracted with tidying up after obvious mistakes. As such, there’s relatively little time or funding left to invest in alternative approaches such as pursuing computing within planetary boundaries or building capabilities around small AI.

The lithium-ion batteries that China dominates are becoming increasingly prevalent. In February Google said that it had installed more than 100 million cells across its data centers and had started to replace diesel generators with batteries. Microsoft said it aimed for its data centers to eliminate diesel fuel for backup by 2030 to meet environmental goals.

They are very geographically concentrated - only 32 countries have data centers, and nearly half of them are in the United States. The state of Virginia has the highest density of data centers globally - it is home to almost 35% of all hyperscale data centers worldwide.