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AI brings soaring emissions for Google and Microsoft, a major contributor to climate change
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/g-s1-9545/ai-brings-soaring-emissions-for-google-and-microsoft-a-major-contributor-to-climate-change(3 min. audio at link)
AI brings soaring emissions for Google and Microsoft, a major contributor to climate change
JULY 12, 2024 5:13 AM ET
Dara Kerr
[...]
He’s a senior research analyst at the Allen Institute for AI and has been studying how artificial intelligence consumes energy. To generate its answers, AI uses far more power than traditional internet uses, like search queries or cloud storage. According to a report by Goldman Sachs, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity as a Google search query.
[...]
But, starting in 2023, Google wrote in its sustainability report that it was no longer "maintaining operational carbon neutrality." The company says it's still pushing for its net-zero goal in 2030.
“Google's real motivation here is to build the best AI systems that they can,” Dodge says. “And they're willing to pour a ton of resources into that, including things like training AI systems on bigger and bigger data centers all the way up to supercomputers, which incurs a tremendous amount of electricity consumption and therefore CO2 emissions.”
Microsoft has taken its climate pledge one step further than Google, saying it will be carbon negative by 2030. But, it too is facing setbacks because of its focus on AI. In its sustainability report released in May, Microsoft said its emissions grew by 29% since 2020 due to the construction of more datacenters that are “designed and optimized to support AI workloads.”
[...]
JULY 12, 2024 5:13 AM ET
Dara Kerr
[...]
He’s a senior research analyst at the Allen Institute for AI and has been studying how artificial intelligence consumes energy. To generate its answers, AI uses far more power than traditional internet uses, like search queries or cloud storage. According to a report by Goldman Sachs, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity as a Google search query.
[...]
But, starting in 2023, Google wrote in its sustainability report that it was no longer "maintaining operational carbon neutrality." The company says it's still pushing for its net-zero goal in 2030.
“Google's real motivation here is to build the best AI systems that they can,” Dodge says. “And they're willing to pour a ton of resources into that, including things like training AI systems on bigger and bigger data centers all the way up to supercomputers, which incurs a tremendous amount of electricity consumption and therefore CO2 emissions.”
Microsoft has taken its climate pledge one step further than Google, saying it will be carbon negative by 2030. But, it too is facing setbacks because of its focus on AI. In its sustainability report released in May, Microsoft said its emissions grew by 29% since 2020 due to the construction of more datacenters that are “designed and optimized to support AI workloads.”
[...]
2 replies
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