In 2021, Google’s total electricity consumption was 18.3 TWh, with AI accounting for 10%–15% of this total.
Let’s call it 10% to make it seem as energy-efficient as possible. That’s 1.83 TWh a year, or about 5 GWh a day. An average US home uses 10.5 MWh a year. You could power 476 US homes for a year, and still have some energy left over, with the amount of energy Google uses on their AI-powered search in a single day.
But then the problem is how google uses AI, not AI itself. I can have an LLM running locally not consuming crazy amounts of energy for my own purposes.
So blaming AI is absurd, we should blame OpenAI, Google, Amazon… This whole hatred for AI is absurd when it’s not the real source of the problem. We should concentrate on blaming and ideally punishing companies for this kind of use (abuse more like) of energy. Energy usage also is not an issue in itself, as long as we use adequate energy sources. If companies start deploying huge solar panel fields on top of their buildings and parkings and whatnot to cover part of the energy use we could all end up better than before even.
I agree that we shouldn’t blame the tools. I also believe the idea that generative AI can be used for good, in the right hands. However, denying the negative impact these tools have is just as disingenuous as saying that the tools are only going to be used by fat cats and grifters looking to maximize profit.
Also, did you know that you can just mod random people? It doesn’t even ask you. You just wake up one day as a moderator.
Here’s some research on how much energy various machine learning models use.
Let’s call it 10% to make it seem as energy-efficient as possible. That’s 1.83 TWh a year, or about 5 GWh a day. An average US home uses 10.5 MWh a year. You could power 476 US homes for a year, and still have some energy left over, with the amount of energy Google uses on their AI-powered search in a single day.
But then the problem is how google uses AI, not AI itself. I can have an LLM running locally not consuming crazy amounts of energy for my own purposes.
So blaming AI is absurd, we should blame OpenAI, Google, Amazon… This whole hatred for AI is absurd when it’s not the real source of the problem. We should concentrate on blaming and ideally punishing companies for this kind of use (abuse more like) of energy. Energy usage also is not an issue in itself, as long as we use adequate energy sources. If companies start deploying huge solar panel fields on top of their buildings and parkings and whatnot to cover part of the energy use we could all end up better than before even.
I agree that we shouldn’t blame the tools. I also believe the idea that generative AI can be used for good, in the right hands. However, denying the negative impact these tools have is just as disingenuous as saying that the tools are only going to be used by fat cats and grifters looking to maximize profit.
Also, did you know that you can just mod random people? It doesn’t even ask you. You just wake up one day as a moderator.