Gordon Noble and Fiona Berry A single query to an AI-powered chatbot can use up to 10 times as much energy as an old-fashioned Google search. Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the world has seen an incredible surge in investment, development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) applications. According to one estimate, the amount of computational power used for AI is doubling roughly every 100 days.
The social and economic impacts of this boom have provoked reactions around the world. European regulators recently pushed Meta to pause plans to train AI models on users’ Facebook and Instagram data. The Bank of International Settlements, which coordinates the world’s central banks, has warned AI adoption may change the way inflation works.
The environmental impacts have so far received less attention. A single query to an AI-powered chatbot can use up to 10 times as much energy as an old-fashioned Google search. Broadly speaking, a generative AI system may use 33 times more energy to complete a task than it would take with traditional software.
This enormous demand for energy translates into surges in carbon emissions and water use, and may place further stress on electricity grids already strained by climate change. Energy Most AI applications run on servers in data centres. In 2023, before the AI boom really kicked off, the International Energy Agency estimated data centres already accounted for 1 per cent to 1.
5 per cent of global electricity use and around.
