ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The internet uses roughly 5 to 10% of all of the world’s electric energy. With artificial intelligence rapidly changing how we use the internet, how does AI impact energy use?
News10NBC’s Emily Putnam spoke with Eric Hittinger, chair of the Department of Public Policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, about the energy cost of AI and how it impacts the environment.
Emily Putnam, News10NBC: “How is AI currently affecting the environment?”
Eric Hittinger, RIT: “So right now, the way AI is affecting the environment is probably greater utilization of existing data centers, and that greater use of existing data centers implies more energy use, it implies more heat being released into the environment.”
Most AI data centers don’t make their own energy. They pull it from an electric grid just like when you turn on a light in your home.
“It’s very reasonable that AI could increase our electricity use by 1, 2, 3%. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but that implies a lot of new power plants would be needed, new transmission lines, new stuff,” Hittinger said.
You may be familiar with common AI language models like ChatGPT. “There’s a sort of data and energy footprint just to build the large language model,” said Hittinger.
When you ask AI a question, it’s sent to a data center where it’s run through a model.
“They’re using computers, in fact, a bank of computers, just to process your question. Now they use this bank of computers only for a fraction of a second, because we get our responses right away,” Hittinger said.
But with more than a billion daily searches on ChatGPT, that energy adds up. “If you put, you know, 50,000 computers in a room, and run them, they get pretty warm, so you have some sort of cooling system,” said Hittinger.
Some data centers use traditional HVAC systems to cool their computers, while others use a natural water source.
“For the most part the environmental footprint of the data centers comes from the energy use that’s remote, so they don’t have a smoke stack at the data center what you have is a smoke stack at a natural gas power plant somewhere, or coal power plant somewhere,” Hittinger said.
At some point, Hittinger thinks the cost of electricity will win out. “The energy use puts a sort of limit on how quickly AI can grow in terms of processing power. Because at some point, these tech companies are going to be spending billions of dollars a year, just on electricity to run the AI data centers,” Hittinger said.
Safety has been another big concern with AI. This month, ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, announced plans to roll out parental controls, including a feature that allows parents to link to their teen’s account.
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