OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has warned the future of artificial intelligence (AI) development rests in the hands of a major breakthrough in energy generation.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Altman said the adoption of the technology in the future would require massive amounts of energy.
“There's no way to get there without a breakthrough,” he said at a Bloomberg event at the meeting while discussing AI.
“It motivates us to go invest more in fusion.”
Nuclear fusion offers the prospect of near-limitless energy by mimicking the process of how our sun produces power.
Atoms are bonded together in a process that can produce more power than is put in, with scientists successfully having repeated such a reaction several times last year.
However, the incredibly high temperatures needed mean the process is difficult to successfully carry out and is yet to become a viable source of energy.
Altman previously invested US$375 million in US fusion company Helion, with his company OpenAI kicking off a mass adoption of AI in late 2022 with the release of ChatGPT.
Given the programme scored 100 million users faster than any other application in history and has been widely adopted since, he added: “It’s totally fair to say that AI is going to need a lot more energy.”
“That will force us to invest more in the technologies that can deliver this, none of which are the ones that are burning carbon.”