Artificial intelligence can help tackle climate change, but to fulfill that promise companies need to find a way to limit AI’s own climate impact. Information and communications technologies already contribute up to 3% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to many estimates. Data centers emit about the same amount as the aviation industry and consume hefty amounts of water. And as AI grows, the energy required to train and run its large-language models will increase. However, AI also can cut emissions by making systems more efficient. Alphabet’s Google and American Airlines used AI to help planes create fewer vapor trails, which contribute to global warming. Google also uses it to forecast river floods and to recommend eco-friendly routes on its maps service. San Francisco-based startup Verse is using AI to simplify the process for companies to get clean power. AI is even being used to generate images of what a warmer world will look like, from depicting ocean encroachment on coastal cities to mapping arid lands prone to wildfires. As AI becomes more integrated into society, finding a neutral—if not positive—net climate impact is crucial. For many companies using AI there are both positive and negative effects on their carbon emissions and water use. That can be quite a balancing act as they pursue their ambitious net-zero targets. Sasha Luccioni, a research scientist at AI-application developer Hugging Face, worked with two other researchers to map the lifetime carbon footprint of a machine-learning model with 176 billion parameters named Bloom—and what they learned was startling. The factors outside of the energy used in training the models—something most research in the field doesn’t factor in—“wound up being so significant they doubled total emissions,” she said.
Full story : Artificial Intelligence Can Make Companies Greener, but It Also Guzzles Energy.
