“We are building a system to stimulate and retrieve energy to Earth”: Electro-Harmonix wants to harness the magnetosphere’s energy to solve the AI power crisis

Electro-Harmonix thinks it has found the solution to the artificial intelligence energy crisis – and the answer lies above the Earth's surface.

AI is becoming commonplace in modern society, from asking ChatGPT for zucchini recipes to having your amp sim craft specific tones on demand. But the technology also needs an extraordinary amount of energy to operate.

As per Forbes, ChatGPT's daily usage is equivalent to the consumption of 180,000 U.S. households, if each used 29 kilo watts. A single prompt can suck up around a bottle's worth of water.

This is where EHX's stargazing solution comes in. The Big Muff maker says there’s a near-limitless supply of energy in the planet’s magnetosphere, just asking to be tapped into.

Earth's magnetosphere is active with unusual magnetic material caused, essentially, by a combination of the sun and the planet’s rotation, which, as Nature reports, could theoretically be harnessed as an energy source. But there is a big debate within scientific circles about whether or not it's actually possible.

But fear not. Where scientists continue to debate, EHX founder Mike Matthews has shared a newsletter in which he says “we have a plan to tap it”.

“I am currently assisting Bob [Myer, former Bell Labs scientist] with building a system on Earth to stimulate and retrieve energy to Earth by means of an oscillation,” he elaborates on an EHX page dedicated to the magnetosphere.

Matthews says he and Myers intend to “team up with the right partner(s) who will provide parallel satellites orbiting earth at about 500 miles.” They would be saddled with “electronics to build up an increasing oscillation” that EHX and Myer would co-design. And the application for this energy is, theoretically, endless.

“This,” he adds, “would conceivably be an easy first step to getting the energy 500 miles up.

“For example, spaceships launched from Earth use most of their energy to get into orbit. With this energy, those spacecraft can be refueled. Additionally, there are numerous defense applications and cryptocurrency mining uses.”

And, of course, it would conceivably generate a glut of energy to ease the AI energy crisis, offsetting the need for vast energy infrastructure expansion on the ground.

The plan is ambitious, but Matthews has never been one to shy away from a challenge; from creating the Memory Man, the world's first analog delay pedal, and being the first firm to drive down consumer costs for flangers and digital delays, EHX has often spearheaded electronic innovation.

There is, of course, a difference between revolutionizing pedalboards and the global energy crisis.

A page dedicated to the topic has also been set up on the Electro-Harmonix website for those after more context.