The growth of Artificial Intelligence has come on so strong and so fast that it threatens to destabilize the energy industry, the economy, and the climate.
Last week, Google stated that its carbon emissions have skyrocketed by a whopping 48 percent over the last five years. “AI-powered services involve considerably more computer power – and so electricity – than standard online activity, prompting a series of warnings about the technology’s environmental impact,” the BBC reported Thursday. Indeed, a recent study from scientists at Cornell University finds that generative AI systems like ChatGPT use up to 33 times more energy than computers running task-specific software. Furthermore, each AI-powered internet query consumes about ten times more energy than traditional internet searches.
This runaway increase in power consumption as AI picks up speed poses a direct…
