AI is becoming more and more important in our lives every day, but its impact on the climate cannot be ignored. Artificial intelligence expert Sasha Luccioni has made serious warnings about the energy consumption of artificial intelligence technologies. Luccioni states that artificial intelligence consumes 30 times more energy than traditional search engines. Aı creates a huge burden on global energy consumption behind the conveniences it offers to people.
AI and climate crisis: Energy consumption is at alarming levels!
Popular AI programs like ChatGPT and Midjourney require huge servers and high processing power. In other words, they consume a lot of energy. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2022, the AI and cryptocurrency sectors consumed 460 terawatt hours of electricity worldwide. This corresponds to 2% of all global electricity production . In other words, AI not only makes our lives easier, but also accelerates the climate crisis.
Drawing attention to this issue, Luccioni has developed a tool called CodeCarbon , which helps developers and programmers measure the carbon footprint of their projects. The tool, which has been downloaded more than 1 million times to date, provides developers with important data to understand the environmental impact of their projects. However, Luccioni noted that this tool only measures energy efficiency, and does not yet take into account the consumption of water or other scarce resources.
While major tech companies, particularly Microsoft and Google, have promised to achieve carbon neutrality within a decade, the rapid growth of AI makes these goals very difficult to achieve. Luccioni argues that major tech giants need to provide more transparency and that governments need to enact laws that regulate AI’s energy use.
Focusing on the result, while AI technology is growing rapidly, its cost to the environment should not be ignored. In order for this growth to be sustainable, more efficient methods must be developed.
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