1,300: Training a large language model is estimated to use about 1,300 megawatt hours of electricity. It’s about the same consumption of 130 US homes for one year. But that’s for the last generation of LLMs, like OpenAI’s GPT-3. The potential electricity usage for GPT-4, the current model, and beyond could be much, much greater.
80 billion: OpenAI struck a deal that would value the ChatGPT maker at $80 billion, making it one of the world’s most valuable private companies. It’s not a traditional fundraising round but a tender offer that allows employees to cash out their much sought-after shares in the company.
50: US states are clamoring to pass legislation to curb the worst effects of AI. By one measure, there are about 50 new AI-related bills introduced to state legislatures each week. New York leads the charge with about 65 outstanding bills, including a new one recently proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul to criminalize deceptive AI.
1999: Fred Trump, the father of former President Donald Trump, died in 1999. But now, the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump political action committee, has used AI to reanimate the elder Trump for a new ad in which he appears to call his son a “disgrace.”
44: The education company Khan Academy made a ChatGPT-based tutoring bot called Khanmigo. The problem? It’s terrible at math, unable to calculate 343 minus 17. The chatbot is being piloted by 65,000 students in 44 school districts. One Yale professor who studies AI put it bluntly: “Asking ChatGPT to do math is sort of like asking a goldfish to ride a bicycle.”In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer weighs in on the politicization of the Olympics after comments by Team USA freestyle skier Hunter Hess sparked backlash about patriotism and national representation.
100 million: The number of people expected to watch the Super Bowl halftime performance with Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar and newly minted Album of the Year winner at the Grammys.
Brazilian skiers, American ICE agents, Israeli bobsledders – this is just a smattering of the fascinating characters that will be present at this year’s Winter Olympics. Yet the focus will be a different country, one that isn’t formally competing: Russia.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), appeals for a candidate during a street speech of the House of Representatives Election Campaign in Shintomi Town, Miyazaki Prefecture on February 6, 2026. The Lower House election will feature voting and counting on February 8th.
Japanese voters head to the polls on Sunday in a snap election for the national legislature’s lower house, called just three months into Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s tenure.