AI emissions are set to outpace the airline industry
AI emissions are set to outpace the airline industry, raising doubts about the feasibility of ‘net zero’ goals
Researchers are questioning the efforts of companies and governments to achieve so-called ‘net-zero’ emissions targets while also backing the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), whose emissions are now projected to “far exceed” those of air travel.
“Tech companies’ self-reported global emissions have been growing rapidly – even before the generative AI boom,” say University of Cambridge researchers, explaining that the sector will be the source of eight percent of ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions by the end of the next decade.
“Increasing investment in AI infrastructure will come with large costs in terms of ‘carbon’ emissions, electricity use, and water consumption,” the team warns in a report published in July.
Companies and governments have spent heavily in recent years on following and enforcing ‘net zero’ stipulations aimed at reducing or eliminating ‘carbon’ emissions by mid-century.
However, the researchers are concerned that governments are increasingly promoting AI as the next big technological advance, despite its voracious appetite for electricity and concerns that it poses a threat to the jobs of millions, with data centers already sucking up between two and four percent of power in China, Europe, and the US.
“Energy grids are already stretched,” said John Naughton, chair of the Advisory Board at Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. “Every megawatt allocated to AI data centres will be a megawatt unavailable for housing or manufacturing.”
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solarsmurph
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Maybe we should ask AI to figure out how to reduce its own power consumption and rate its own costs to actual benefit ratio.
As it seems that AI power consumption is putting such a strain on power grids, maybe anyone creating/using AI should be taxed for both their power usage and be made to paid for the upgrades to the already unstable and neglected power grid infrastructure.
AI – Bah Humbug – just another search engine, and with dubious and biased results.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Solarsmurph and PSI Readers,
This article and your comment are very important. For as I take a picture with my cell phone and then use the cell phone to show the picture to friends; I don’t consider that the picture is being stored in my little cell phone. Instead of this storage I believe it, the picture, is being archived in some big computer, some where, which is being continuously powered by electricity. Is my belief a TRUE FACT?
Have a good day
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VOWG
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I will say yes.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Editor,
My posted comment has disappeared again
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VOWG
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Anyone who believes in net zero is a moron . There is nothing else to said.
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Aaron
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Anyone who believes we need government are morons
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