Three takeaways about AI’s energy use and climate impacts
1 min read
Summary
A new investigation by The Wire has revealed that the emissions generated by individual AI text, image and video queries appear modest, but when combined with the industry’s general lack of tracking, the potential overall emissions could be cause for concern.
Furthermore, the article reveals that increasing AI’s invisibility within everyday tech interactions could mean its energy usage is hugely underestimated.
Current estimates for the energy used by AI are predominantly guesswork due to closed-source models, and the investigation found that the emissions generated by queries on different data centres can differ significantly.
This is due to the noxious fuel sources powering some data centres, while others are powered by renewable fuels, as well as the different sizes of models and the complexity of individual queries.