- Digiconomist Founder Alex-de-Vries has attempted to evaluate the growing environmental impact of AI.
- He tracks the energy consumption due to cryptocurrency mining.
Artificial Intelligence’s huge usage in all sectors alerts the environmental overseer about the amount of energy artificial models consume. But, there should be real data supporting the facts. As per reports from Alex de Vries, he strives to find the growing environment’s effect of AI.
He said that the program is fed with a large number of databases or information before the AI answers in a single prompt. He argues that when AI is tested against real-world data it is not given much attention by the environmental groups when it may significantly contribute to the life cycle cost of an AI model.
De Vries also tracks the energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining and added that certain numbers are supporting the AI carbon footprint but the content to support wasn’t there. He said this was the time when he figured out to shed light on the matter although he found it difficult.
Although he accepted that it is very different than with cryptocurrencies to come up with numbers. He also highlights that the cryptocurrency companies say that they are working on renewable energy but the cost of building the large data centers needed to implant hundreds of computers does not produce jobs for the local economy.
“It means that it is not supporting additional businesses because data centers do not require a lot of people to run the setup and you are left with a massive power hog,” said De Vries.
He also accentuated the slowness of the environmental community and said that the first headlines related to Bitcoin’s energy came in 2017-18 when the first Bitcoin bubble happened. In the second half of 2022, environmental organizations started to get seriously involved.
Others who Highlighted the AI Energy Consumption
Associated Press (AP), earlier this month released a report that shows that ChatGPT utilizes about 500 milliliters of water for every 5 to 50 prompts. The AP also added that the data centers of OpenAI are allegedly located near the same waters in Iowa that feed the local corn fields.
Adam Sharp, previously quoted 2017 Newsweek’s prediction that Bitcoin will consume 100% of the world’s energy by 2020. He also added that the tech is very new and efficiency will improve dramatically over the coming years.
Some like De Vries and others were highlighting and focusing on AI energy consumption while others say that the concern will be pretentious as it is for the blockchain energy consumption.
De Vries stated that to solve the environmental issues full dependency on AI technology and hardware solutions is overrated. It is too optimistic to expect that hardware and software efficiencies will result positively in AI-related electricity consumption. The advancement in technologies will increase the demand for AI which will increase rather than reduce total resource use.
He further expressed that environmental groups will pay attention to AI electricity consumption, having learned from cryptocurrencies. However, there is only limited data available to prove the fact of environmental impact by its usage.
Dr. Naveen Singh is an entrepreneur with achievements in sports, academics, healthcare, innovation, blockchain technology, telecommunications, and philanthropy. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Inery, the first layer-1 blockchain programmed for database management. With Inery, he aligns with his vision of a new paradigm for data to empower web3 and complete decentralization.