In this article, I write about the impact of GenAI applications on the environment. Continue reading if you are curious about how much energy AI chatbots need, what effects this may have on our environment and what we can do to reduce energy consumption.
Photo by panumas nikhomkhai
Introductory
You may have heard that the energy requirements of GenAI solutions are very high.
Why is this?
If we ask chatGPT a question, then it searches the Internet: it compiles the relevant answer to your question from the information there and from the huge database in its Large Language Model (LLM). In order to answer your question not in minutes, but almost immediately, we need high computing power, which has significant energy consumption.
How much energy do Google searches and GenAI requests consume?
The energy requirement of a Google search is about 0.3 Wh, with which we could operate a 60 W light bulb for 17 seconds. Of course, the number of daily searches is very high, but we can say that Google’s energy consumption is still modest compared to AI.
In contrast, a single question to chatGPT or another chatbot consumes roughly 2.9 Wh. (source) This is equivalent to about 10 Google searches.
ChatGPT’s annual energy consumption is roughly 227 GWh.
This amount of energy would be sufficient:
- to charge 95% of US electric cars
- cover the energy supply of more than 26,000 American households
The energy requirement for training BERT was estimated to be that of a trans-American flight in 2019 (source). The training of GPT-3 cost approximately 1.287 MWh of energy (source).
The challenge of AI in the future
Based on the forecasts, the energy demand of AI data centers will increase by 44.7% until 2027. This is the compound annual growth rate (CAGR)), so it can reach 146.2 TWh (source).
Another challenging area is the water demand of AI solutions. This is also a very significant factor in terms of environmental effects. I will not cover this topic in this article.
So it doesn’t hurt to keep these facts in mind and start using AI more consciously.
How can we do this? This is what the next chapter is about.
Possible solutions
Now you understand how serving the ever-increasing GenAI needs affects energy consumption.
What can we do to reduce AI’s insatiable appetite?
Global level
The solution at the corporate level could be if AI companies can turn to renewable energy sources (e.g. solar and wind energy). Other possible solution is to optimize their hardware, algorithms and business model.
By the way, big companies like Google and OpenAI are increasingly trying to use more energy-efficient data centers and renewable energy sources in order to reduce the environmental load.
There are also attempts to use nuclear energy, which I personally do not consider an ideal solution. There is some risk of a nuclear power plant disaster (Chernobyl, Fukushima) and nuclear waste is also generated during the process.
Wind and solar energy can therefore be a better solution. Although the production of solar panels is not an environmentally friendly solution, it can still be a better alternative than the use of fossil fuels in the long run. (source)
In addition, companies offering AI solutions can limit access to services, for example, by making them paid or by providing a better service to subscribers.
State-level regulations can also help keep energy consumption under control.
What can we do as a community and as individuals?
You might think, “One person doesn’t matter, I can’t do anything.”
In fact, it is precisely the case that if we form good habits together, we can greatly support a good cause (similar to how we started to use GenAI more and more intensively).
It is a fact that even large companies are increasingly pushing for the use of GenAI, as they would lose their competitiveness if they did not do this.
On this blog, I would like to regularly give tips on how to optimally use AI solutions. In some cases, how to replace AI with classic non-AI tools.
My plan is that there will be regular noAI challenges. For a few days we will not use GenAI tools, but only “traditional” digital solutions to draw or edit the images.
I know that this is not feasible in all cases, since AI is now present as an integrated service in many devices and software (smartphones, office software, operating systems, etc). Nevertheless, I hope that this article was of concern to you and that you too can find an area where you can moderate the use of AI.
What I, as a blog owner, can do for reduce energy consumption of AI:
- I write articles that help you make optimal use of AI, such as:
- efficient prompt writing, so you can achieve the desired result with fewer attempts
- writing most of the articles without using AI (currently I write 60-70% of articles without AI)
- illustrating articles with photos or self-made graphics instead of AI generated images
- generating as few AI videos as possible
- organization of noAI and wiseAI challenges
- instead of weekly AI Art Gallery, a maximum of 1-2 galleries per month
- providing image editing tips
Summary
Generative AI solutions are developing rapidly and are now available to everyone. This explosive development has resulted in a massive increase in the energy demand of AI solutions on a global scale.
In order to manage this change, we need conscious and reasonable solutions. The huge appetite of AI systems cannot be sustained in the long term.
We may have to wait a little while longer, but maybe we will be able to calm down the AI hype a little and reopen the traditional digital and analog solutions in the field of arts as well. Remember that many masterpieces in the fields of graphics, music, film production and text writing have already been created without AI.
P.s.: I wrote this article about AI without AI.
