Technology

What AI's insatiable appetite for power means for our future

Published

6 months ago

June 20, 2025

What AI's insatiable appetite for power means for our future

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Every time you ask ChatGPT a question, to generate an image or let artificial intelligence summarize your email, something big is happening behind the scenes. Not on your device, but in sprawling data centers filled with servers, GPUs and cooling systems that require massive amounts of electricity.

The modern AI boom is pushing our power grid to its limits. ChatGPT alone processes roughly 1 billion queries per day, each requiring data center resources far beyond what’s on your device.

In fact, the energy needed to support artificial intelligence is rising so quickly that it has already delayed the retirement of several coal plants in the U.S., with more delays expected. Some experts warn that the AI arms race is outpacing the infrastructure meant to support it. Others argue it could spark long-overdue clean energy innovation.

AI isn’t just reshaping apps and search engines. It’s also reshaping how we build, fuel and regulate the digital world. The race to scale up AI capabilities is accelerating faster than most infrastructure can handle, and energy is becoming the next major bottleneck.

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Here’s a look at how AI is changing the energy equation, and what it might mean for our climate future.

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ChatGPT on a computer (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Why AI uses so much power, and what drives the demand

Running artificial intelligence at scale requires enormous computational power. Unlike traditional internet activity, which mostly involves pulling up stored information, AI tools perform intensive real-time processing. Whether training massive language models or responding to user prompts, AI systems rely on specialized hardware like GPUs (graphics processing unit) that consume far more power than legacy servers. GPUs are designed to handle many calculations in parallel, which is perfect for the matrix-heavy workloads that power generative AI and deep learning systems.

To give you an idea of scale: one Nvidia H100 GPU, commonly used in AI training, consumes up to 700 watts on its own. Training a single large AI model like GPT-4 may require thousands of these GPUs running continuously for weeks. Multiply that across dozens of models and hundreds of data centers, and the numbers escalate quickly. A traditional data center rack might use around 8 kilowatts (kW) of power. An AI-optimized rack using GPUs can demand 45-55 kW or more. Multiply that across an entire building or campus of racks, and the difference is staggering.

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Cooling all that hardware adds another layer of energy demand. Keeping AI servers from overheating accounts for 30-55% of a data center’s total power use. Advanced cooling methods like liquid immersion are helping, but scaling those across the industry will take time.

On the upside, AI researchers are developing more efficient ways to run these systems. One promising approach is the “mixture of experts” model architecture, which activates only a portion of the full model for each task. This method can significantly reduce the amount of energy required without sacrificing performance.

How much power are we talking about?

In 2023, global data centers consumed about 500 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity. That is enough to power every home in California, Texas and Florida combined for an entire year. By 2030, the number could triple, with AI as the main driver.

To put it into perspective, the average home uses about 30 kilowatt-hours per day. One terawatt-hour is a billion times larger than a kilowatt-hour. That means 1 TWh could power 33 million homes for a day.

Data center (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

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AI’s energy demand is outpacing the power grid

The demand for AI is growing faster than the energy grid can adapt. In the U.S., data center electricity use is expected to surpass 600 TWh by 2030, tripling current levels. Meeting that demand requires the equivalent of adding 14 large power plants to the grid. Large AI data centers can each require 100–500 megawatts (MW), and the largest facilities may soon exceed 1 gigawatt (GW), which is about as much as a nuclear power plant or a small U.S. state. One 1 GW data center could consume more power than the entire city of San Francisco. Multiply that by a few dozen campuses across the country, and you start to see how quickly this demand adds up.

To keep up, utilities across the country are delaying coal plant retirements, expanding natural gas infrastructure and shelving clean energy projects. In states like Utah, Georgia and Wisconsin, energy regulators have approved new fossil fuel investments directly linked to data center growth. By 2035, data centers could account for 8.6% of all U.S. electricity demand, up from 3.5% today.

Despite public pledges to support sustainability, tech companies are inadvertently driving a fossil fuel resurgence. For the average person, this shift could increase electricity costs, strain regional energy supplies and complicate state-level clean energy goals.

Power grid facility (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Can big tech keep its green energy promises?

Tech giants Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta all claim they are working toward a net-zero emissions future. In simple terms, this means balancing the amount of greenhouse gases they emit with the amount they remove or offset, ideally bringing their net contribution to climate change down to zero.

These companies purchase large amounts of renewable energy to offset their usage and invest in next-generation energy solutions. For example, Microsoft has a contract with fusion start-up Helion to supply clean electricity by 2028.

However, critics argue these clean energy purchases do not reflect the reality on the ground. Because the grid is shared, even if a tech company buys solar or wind power on paper, fossil fuels often fill the gap for everyone else.

Some researchers say this model is more beneficial for company accounting than for climate progress. While the numbers might look clean on a corporate emissions report, the actual energy powering the grid still includes coal and gas. Microsoft, Google and Amazon have pledged to power their data centers with 100% renewable energy, but because the grid is shared, fossil fuels often fill the gap when renewables aren’t available.

Some critics argue that voluntary pledges alone are not enough. Unlike traditional industries, there is no standardized regulatory framework requiring tech companies to disclose detailed energy usage from AI operations. This lack of transparency makes it harder to track whether green pledges are translating into meaningful action, especially as workloads shift to third-party contractors or overseas operations.

A wind energy farm (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

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The future of clean energy for AI and its limits

To meet soaring energy needs without worsening emissions, tech companies are investing in advanced energy projects. These include small nuclear reactors built directly next to data centers, deep geothermal systems and nuclear fusion.

While promising, these technologies face enormous technical and regulatory hurdles. Fusion, for example, has never reached commercial break-even, meaning it has yet to produce more energy than it consumes. Even the most optimistic experts say we may not see scalable fusion before the 2030s.

Beyond the technical barriers, many people have concerns about the safety, cost and long-term waste management of new nuclear systems. While proponents argue these designs are safer and more efficient, public skepticism remains a real hurdle. Community resistance is also a factor. In some regions, proposals for nuclear microreactors or geothermal drilling have faced delays due to concerns over safety, noise and environmental harm. Building new data centers and associated power infrastructure can take up to seven years, due to permitting, land acquisition and construction challenges.

Google recently activated a geothermal project in Nevada, but it only generates enough power for a few thousand homes. The next phase may be able to power a single data center by 2028. Meanwhile, companies like Amazon and Microsoft continue building sites that consume more power than entire citie.

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Will AI help or harm the environment?

This is the central debate. Advocates argue that AI could ultimately help accelerate climate progress by optimizing energy grids, modeling emissions patterns and inventing better clean technology. Microsoft and Google have both cited these uses in their public statements. But critics warn that the current trajectory is unsustainable. Without major breakthroughs or stricter policy frameworks, the energy cost of AI may overwhelm climate gains. A recent forecast estimated that AI could add 1.7 gigatons of carbon dioxide to global emissions between 2025 and 2030, roughly 4% more than the entire annual emissions of the U.S.

Water use, rare mineral demand and land-use conflicts are also emerging concerns as AI infrastructure expands. Large data centers often require millions of gallons of water for cooling each year, which can strain local water supplies. The demand for critical minerals like lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements — used in servers, cooling systems and power electronics — creates additional pressure on supply chains and mining operations. In some areas, communities are pushing back against land being rezoned for large-scale tech development.

Rapid hardware turnover is also adding to the environmental toll. As AI systems evolve quickly, older GPUs and accelerators are replaced more frequently, creating significant electronic waste. Without strong recycling programs in place, much of this equipment ends up in landfills or is exported to developing countries.

The question isn’t just whether AI can become cleaner over time. It’s whether we can scale the infrastructure needed to support it without falling back on fossil fuels. Meeting that challenge will require tighter collaboration between tech companies, utilities and policymakers. Some experts warn that AI could either help fight climate change or make it worse, and the outcome depends entirely on how we choose to power the future of computing.

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Kurt’s key takeaways

AI is revolutionizing how we work, but it is also transforming how we use energy. Data centers powering AI systems are becoming some of the world’s largest electricity consumers. Tech companies are betting big on futuristic solutions, but the reality is that many fossil fuel plants are staying online longer just to meet AI’s rising energy demand. Whether AI ends up helping or hurting the climate may depend on how quickly clean energy breakthroughs catch up and how honestly we measure progress.

Is artificial intelligence worth the real-world cost of fossil resurgence? Let us know your thoughts by writing to us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.

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Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

I’ve been waiting years for Animal Crossing’s best new features

Published

7 hours ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

I’ve been waiting years for Animal Crossing’s best new features

I never felt done with my Animal Crossing: New Horizons island. Despite playing every day for two years, and racking up 1,700 hours of playtime, I somehow never finished decorating. I had plenty of ideas for my island, sure, but actually implementing them was another story: The decorating and terraforming systems that helped make New Horizons a huge success are also slow, manual, and cumbersome, and my patience for decorating and redecorating had finally worn thin.

Fast-forward a few years, and a very much unexpected update is coming to finally fix some of those pain points. Update 3.0 is launching on January 15th, 2026, alongside the Switch 2 Edition of New Horizons. And while the paid Switch 2 upgrade has some nice-to-haves (like Joy-Con 2 mouse controls for indoor decorating), it’s the free update that brings all the key new features.

I recently attended a virtual preview for the New Horizons upgrade and update, and there are two caveats: I have not yet played either the Switch 2 version or the new free content myself, and it’s hard to gauge the quality of the Switch 2 version’s visual and performance improvements over a Zoom call. (I still have some unanswered questions about the biggest performance issues on the original Switch, like the choppy frame rate on more densely decorated islands.) But seeing the 3.0 additions in action, it was easy to imagine myself finishing my island — or at least an island.

As shown in the October announcement trailer, update 3.0 makes much-needed quality-of-life fixes. You’ll finally be able to craft multiple items at once, and crafting will pull materials from your overall storage instead of your pockets, meaning you won’t have to do a bunch of inventory management just to craft some decor. Then there’s Resetti’s Reset Service, which can help you clean up entire sections of your island instantly so you don’t have to pick everything up individually in order to redecorate. Some players also noticed a very subtle but potentially impactful change to movement while terraforming that should hopefully make it a smoother process. And then, as if to show off those decorating improvements, Nintendo also added Slumber Islands.

Not to be confused with dreams, New Horizons’ online island-sharing feature, Slumber Islands are extra sandboxes for you to decorate and play with, where you can set the time of day and the weather and magically conjure up any item you have in your in-game catalog to decorate with, similar to the Happy Home Paradise DLC. You can build bridges and inclines instantly by talking to Lloid, rather than going through Tom Nook and waiting (or time traveling) a day. And while it seems like terraforming works the same on Slumber Islands, the apparent addition of strafing while terraforming — instead of having to constantly reorient yourself manually — should help at least a little bit. (It’s the first thing I’m going to test on January 15th, that’s for sure.)

For me, the worst part of decorating in New Horizons was having an idea, ordering all the furniture I’d need for it over the course of days, testing out the design, realizing it did not look the way I envisioned, and facing the tedious process of breaking it all down and starting over again brick by brick — or, at the very least, having to push and pull objects around for a while to see if I could make it work. The design process I saw on Nintendo’s Slumber Island during the preview, meanwhile, seemed quicker and smoother. Trying out an idea or aesthetic in that environment doesn’t sound like such a tall order.

Without any hands-on time, I can’t say if it will actually be noticeably easier to design and decorate with the 3.0 update. But I’m excited by the idea that I can go to my Slumber Island scratch pad and try out my designs before committing to them (and the cost in bells to get it all done) on my main island. And maybe, if I really like how it feels to decorate, I’ll make an entire Halloween-themed Slumber Island — the kind of island I’ve wanted to make for years but never did on my main island, where the seasons continue to change and actively ruin the vibe.

Technology

Password manager fined after major data breach

Published

7 hours ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Password manager fined after major data breach

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Any data breach affecting 1.6 million people is serious. It draws even more attention when it involves a company trusted to guard passwords. That is exactly what happened to LastPass.

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has fined LastPass about $1.6 million for security failures tied to its 2022 breach. Regulators say those failures allowed a hacker to access a backup database and put users at risk.

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CHECK IF YOUR PASSWORDS WERE STOLEN IN HUGE LEAK

Why the LastPass breach still matters

LastPass is one of the most widely used password managers in the world. It serves more than 20 million individual users and around 100,000 businesses. That popularity also makes it an attractive target for cybercriminals.

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office fined LastPass for security failures tied to its 2022 breach. (LaylaBird/Getty Images)

In 2022, LastPass confirmed that an unauthorized party accessed parts of its customer information through a third-party cloud storage service. While the incident initially raised alarms, the long-term impact has taken time to fully surface.

The ICO now says the breach affected about 1.6 million UK users alone. That scope played a major role in the size of the fine.

What regulators say went wrong

According to the ICO, LastPass failed to put strong enough technical and security controls in place. Those gaps made it possible for attackers to reach a backup database that should have been better protected.

The regulator added that LastPass promises to help people improve security, but failed to meet that expectation. As a result, users were left exposed even if their passwords were not directly cracked.

Were passwords exposed or decrypted?

There is still no evidence that attackers decrypted customer passwords. That point matters.

Despite the breach, security experts continue to recommend password managers for most people. Storing unique, strong passwords in an encrypted vault is still far safer than reusing weak passwords across accounts.

As one expert noted, modern breaches often succeed after identity access rather than password cracking alone. Once attackers get a foothold, the damage can spread quickly.

Although attackers accessed a backup database, there is no evidence that customer passwords were decrypted. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Why the LastPass fine is a wake-up call for cybersecurity

The ICO called the LastPass fine a turning point. It reinforces the idea that security is about governance, staff training and supplier risk as much as software.

Users have a right to expect that companies handling sensitive data take every reasonable step to protect it.

Breaches may be inevitable, but weak safeguards are not.

LastPass on the UK data breach

We reached out to LastPass for comment on the UK fine, and a spokesperson provided CyberGuy with the following statement:

“We have been cooperating with the UK ICO since we first reported this incident to them back in 2022. While we are disappointed with the outcome, we are pleased to see that the ICO’s decision has recognized many of the efforts we have already taken to further strengthen our platform and enhance our data security measures. Our focus remains on delivering the best possible service to the 100,000 businesses and millions of individual consumers who continue to rely on LastPass.”

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How to protect yourself after a password manager breach

Breaches like this are a reminder that security requires layers. No single tool can protect everything on its own.

1) Use a strong password manager correctly

Keep using a reputable password manager. Set a long, unique master password and enable two-factor authentication. Avoid reusing your master password anywhere else.

Next, see if your email has been exposed in past breaches. Our No. 1 password manager pick includes a built-in breach scanner that checks whether your email address or passwords have appeared in known leaks. If you discover a match, immediately change any reused passwords and secure those accounts with new, unique credentials.

Check out the best expert-reviewed password managers of 2025 at Cyberguy.com.

2) Rotate sensitive passwords

Change passwords for financial accounts, email accounts and work logins. Focus on services that could cause real damage if compromised.

3) Lock down your email

Your email account is the key to password resets. Use a strong password, two-factor authentication and recovery options you control.

4) Reduce your exposed personal data

Data brokers collect and sell personal information that criminals use for targeting. A data removal service can help reduce what is publicly available about you. While no service can guarantee the complete removal of your data from the internet, a data removal service is really a smart choice. They aren’t cheap, and neither is your privacy. These services do all the work for you by actively monitoring and systematically erasing your personal information from hundreds of websites. It’s what gives me peace of mind and has proven to be the most effective way to erase your personal data from the internet. By limiting the information available, you reduce the risk of scammers cross-referencing data from breaches with information they might find on the dark web, making it harder for them to target you.

Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.

Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web: Cyberguy.com.

The fine sends a warning to the entire cybersecurity industry. Companies that handle sensitive data must protect it with strong safeguards and oversight. (REUTERS/Andrew Kelly)

5) Watch for phishing attempts and use strong antivirus software

After major breaches, scammers follow. Be cautious of emails claiming urgent account problems or asking for verification details. The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe.

Get my picks for the best 2025 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices at Cyberguy.com.

6) Keep devices updated

Install updates for your operating system, browser and security tools. Many attacks rely on known vulnerabilities that updates already fix.

Kurt’s key takeaways

The fine against LastPass is about more than one company. It highlights how much trust we place in tools that manage our digital lives. Password managers remain a smart security choice. Still, this case shows why you should stay alert even when using trusted brands. Strong settings, regular reviews and layered protection matter more than ever. In the end, security works best when companies and we share the responsibility. Tools help, but habits and awareness finish the job.

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Do you believe companies are doing enough to protect user data, or should regulators step in more often? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

Technology

Silksong is getting a free expansion next year

Published

19 hours ago

December 15, 2025

Press Room

Silksong is getting a free expansion next year

It’s still hard to believe that Hollow Knight: Silksong actually came out this year, but now, we all have a new thing to wait for: the game is getting a free expansion in 2026, titled Sea of Sorrow. Team Cherry calls it the game’s “first big expansion.”

“New areas, bosses, tools, and more!” Team Cherry says in a blog post. “Hornet’s adventures continue in our nautically themed expansion, coming free for all players next year. We’ll keep further details a secret for now, but expect additional info shortly before Hollow Knight: Silksong – Sea of Sorrow releases.”

More than 7 million people bought Silksong, according to Team Cherry, and “millions more” played on Xbox Game Pass.

The original Hollow Knight is getting updated, too. Team Cherry is working on a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of the game that “incorporates all the updates and enhancements that Silksong received on the platform: High frame-rate modes, higher resolutions, and many additional graphical effects.” Players who own the Switch version of the game will get the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition as a free update when it’s available in 2026.

Ahead of that launch, Team Cherry says it will be “updating all versions of the original game for current platforms, adding features and fixing bugs.” Those changes include “full 16:10 and 21:9 aspect ratio support for those of you with Steam Decks or ultrawide monitors,” and PC players can try the new updates in public beta.