“Artificial Intelligence’s Thirst for Power Ignites the Web’s Era of Hyper-Consumption: A Spotlight on the Lighter Side of AI’s Energy Appetite!”
“AI’s Energy Demands Are Out of Control. Welcome to the Internet’s Hyper-Consumption Era”
“As climate disasters pile up, it’s increasingly clear that our current trajectory is catastrophic. As individuals, we’re doing what we can: recycling, conserving water, maybe even changing our diets. But our efforts pale in comparison to the global impact of industry and heavy infrastructure, especially that of the internet and associated technologies.” Wired magazine certainly knew how to kick off a discussion about AI’s impact on the environment.
Who wouldn’t be awed by the massive server farms buzzing with power, piled high with high-end hardware solely dedicated to poring through the so-called ‘data-lakes’. These digital wonders run the gamut from recommending the next binge-worthy Netflix series to customizing the shopping experience on Amazon. Fantastic, yes, but at what cost?
Did you know that worldwide internet activity accounts for approximately 7 percent of global electricity consumption? Ever stop to consider how many glasses of water it takes to create an ‘AI model,’ a tool used by scientists and engineers for AI? Well, let’s pop that intriguing bubble, shall we? It’s more than the entire lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of some 125 round-trip flights between New York and Beijing!
Suddenly, that ‘recommended for you’ banner on Netflix takes on a new, rather less eco-friendly perspective, doesn’t it? But hey, to be fair, not all heroes wear capes, and our tech companies are trying hard to mitigate these impacts. Some of them are redesigning chips to optimize energy efficiency or applying machine learning to reduce energy requirements in data centers, besides investing in wind and solar farms. Even large scale projects like Google’s DeepMind’s project to reduce energy usage in cooling centers are in the works.
Nevertheless, it’s evident that the massive energy and water footprint of the digital world can’t be offset solely by these valiant efforts. It may sound deflating, but we are in an age of internet hyper-consumption, and the impacts are as real as they are significant. So let’s keep this conversation going, shine more light on this pressing issue, and maybe – just maybe – on that fateful day, the recommendation algorithms might be convinced to suggest ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ instead of the latest escapist binge-fest. After all, what’s more gripping than the narrative of our own survival?