The Paradox Of Decarbonising AI

Balancing the challenge of using AI for decarbonising industries while addressing its significant energy consumption is crucial for sustainable progress.

AI can bring untold benefits such as optimised energy use but guzzles a lot of water and power. The paradox can be tackled by aligning AI development with green practices.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds immense potential to drive decarbonisation, by offering revolutionary benefits such as optimised energy consumption and speeding up the deployment of renewable energy.

However, this potential is not without its challenges, because running AI operations entails the substantial use of energy and water – a paradox which puts investors in sustainable practices in a difficult position, given that they must balance the push for AI-driven transformation with the risk of increased carbon emissions if AI systems are not sustainably powered.

In the realm of investing, this issue has intensified. Investors face the dual burden of decarbonising investment portfolios while ensuring profitability. Explicit emissions targets or “budgets” often require rebalancing portfolios to stay within set carbon limits. Yet, as investments in AI technologies grow, so will the complexity of managing their environmental impact.

Environmental impact

Training and operating advanced AI models consume enormous amounts of energy. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has noted that a single Google search consumes 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, but a ChatGPT request requires 2.9 watt-hours – pointing to the large difference in computational expense.

But while both figures appear small in isolation, there are profound environmental implications at scale.

Companies across industries are rapidly integrating AI for diverse applications, ranging from customer-service chatbots to AI-powered analytics tools that boost efficiency and decision-making. For instance, in Singapore, an AI utility was launched to combat greenwashing by using nationwide green building to support decisions on sustainability-linked loans.

Der Beitrag The Paradox Of Decarbonising AI erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

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