AI’s Dirty Little Secret

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is touted as one of the greatest technological shifts of our time.

Using the power of deep learning, modern computers and data centres are shifting towards providing tools for humanity that we dared not even dream of mere decades ago. Used in fields such as climatology, medicine and engineering, the tasks of developing new and more efficient ways of making things or studying the physical world, humanity can take some incredible steps forward.

However, in making this sort of technology more accessible to anybody with an internet connection – in the form of document creation, photographic image generation and intelligent personal assistants and so forth – there is a hidden cost to the planet: AI uses vast amounts of energy and increased water consumption.

In order to run AI functions, computer hardware needs significantly increased energy input which in turn generates lots of heat, cooled by water-based cooling systems.

A recent study – as reported in an article in US online technology magazine SlashGear – has suggested that a single AI generated image requires the equivalent energy to half the battery storage of a modern smartphone. Considering that estimates indicate around 34 million such requests made each day, that is a substantial amount of energy consumption.

Of course, AI is not going away. In fact it’s only going to get more common, touching on parts of our lives that we may not even be aware of, as it does so. But, armed with the knowledge that there is an environmental cost to its existence, we should all consider how and when it should be appropriately applied.

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Credit: header image from an original photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash