New Delhi, July 3 -- Recently, I was in a conversation with MIT researchers on artificial intelligence (AI) and nuclear energy. While discussing the subject, we saw a video clip of a data centre that looked like a giant fridge but buzzed like a jet engine. Inside, thousands of AI chips were training a new language model-one that could write poems, analyse genomes or simulate the weather on Mars.

What struck me wasn't the intelligence of this machine. It was the sheer energy it was devouring. The engineer said, "This one building consumes as much power as a small town." That's when the magnitude of the challenge hit me: If AI is our future, how on earth will we power it?

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