AI is an energy hog. This is what it means for climate change.

10 comments

1. **From the article:**

   As AI has become more integrated into our world, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the technology’s rising electricity demand. You may have seen the headlines proclaiming that [AI uses as much electricity as small countries](https://www.vox.com/climate/2024/3/28/24111721/ai-uses-a-lot-of-energy-experts-expect-it-to-double-in-just-a-few-years), that it’ll usher in a [fossil-fuel resurgence](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/05/ai-could-drive-natural-gas-boom-as-utilities-face-surging-electric-demand.html), and that it’s already [challenging the grid](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj5ll89dy2mo).  

   So how worried should we be about AI’s electricity demands? Well, it’s complicated. 

   Using AI for certain tasks can come with a significant energy price tag. With some powerful AI models, generating an image can require as much energy as charging up your phone, as my colleague Melissa Heikkilä explained in [a story from December](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/01/1084189/making-an-image-with-generative-ai-uses-as-much-energy-as-charging-your-phone/?utm_source=the_spark&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_spark.unpaid.engagement&utm_content=*%7Cdate:m-d-y%7C*). Create 1,000 images with a model like Stable Diffusion XL, and you’ve produced as much carbon dioxide as driving just over four miles in a gas-powered car, according to the researchers Melissa spoke to. 

   But while generated images are splashy, there are plenty of AI tasks that don’t use as much energy. For example, creating images is thousands of times more energy-intensive than generating text. And using a smaller model that’s tailored to a specific task, rather than a massive, all-purpose generative model, can be dozens of times more efficient. In any case, generative AI models require energy, and we’re using them a lot. 

2. So AI isn’t on the path to reduced energy consumption?

3. Cryptocurrency “farming” is also very, very bad for climate change.

   I’m still very bullish on a few select cryptocurrencies. Decentralization is the future.

4. This is why AI needs to be heavily limited- let scientists figure stuff out that would have taken decades, let doctors identify issues with better accuracy, all that good stuff. But the cost heavily outweighs the benefits in letting everyone use it for everything. We need to be moving to a more resource-efficient way of living, not less.

5. We can just mine more bitcoin to power the AI, problem solved /s

6. Right it’s ironic that that a lot of folks think technology will save us when it is actually a driver of the problem due to increased energy use.

   Cloud computing, AI, and crypto (particularly proof of work) all require huge amounts of energy. Technology generally creates the problem. New tech just requires more energy for its function.

   Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of tech, but it’s not the solution to climate crisis generally (though better renewables are an exception to this).

7. The AI energy issue highlights one of the big barriers to achieving a zero emissions future. For decades, the energy efficiency of computing has steadily increased as indeed has the efficiency of manufacturing the chips used to perform the computations. We haven’t used all these efficiencies to reduce our total computational energy consumption of course, we’ve just found more and more ways to use the extra capacity and then some.

   Some hard limits will need to be applied and enforced to counteract the natural tendency to grow as much as allowed or mother nature will have to step in and do it herself.

8. What’s sad is that consultants are already promoting AI use as a way to decrease a company’s emissions… simply by removing workers from their books. Those workers and their emissions don’t go away, they just get placed outside of an individual company’s bucket.

9. Perhaps it will find its own source of energy, like harvesting the energy of living humans that they keep in some sort of matrix?

10. AI is unnecessary for the average consumer. A frivolity wasting energy for no reason. Reserve it for the few niche applications where it might be beneficial. Look at we have been able to do without it.