Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
You can't see Google from the sky, but you can see AI. A gigawatt of compute equals roughly one nuclear plant's worth of power—and a mountain of materials.
On the Century of Plenty podcast, MGI director Chris Bradley explains why AI has such a physical footprint. A single gigawatt of compute—the new unit of AI—takes an enormous bill of materials: cement, steel, copper, and chips, plus the transmission equipment and gas turbines upstream. Unlike earlier internet giants, AI's buildout is visible on the landscape, and that's changing how we think about energy and materials.
From the Century of Plenty podcast: mck.co/cop-ed-conway
You can't see Google from the sky, but you can see AI. A gigawatt of compute equals roughly one nuclear plant's worth of power—and a mountain of materials.
On the Century of Plenty podcast, MGI director Chris Bradley explains why AI has such a physical footprint. A single gigawatt of compute—the new unit of AI—takes an enormous bill of materials: cement, steel, copper, and chips, plus the transmission equipment and gas turbines upstream. Unlike earlier internet giants, AI's buildout is visible on the landscape, and that's changing how we think about energy and materials.
From the Century of Plenty podcast: mck.co/cop-ed-conway
