The Drive for AI in the Industrial Era: From Goldman’s AI to Google’s Ethical AI-First Start in 2022
This rush to add AI to as many online interactions as possible can be traced back to OpenAI’s boundary-pushing release of ChatGPT late in 2022. When generative artificial intelligence became an obsession in Silicon Valley, large language models powered by the technology were put into the online user experience.
Goldman is expecting data centers to use 8% of the country’s total power by the year 2030. Company analysts say “the proliferation of AI technology, and the data centers necessary to feed it” will drive a surge in power demand “the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a generation.”
Junchen Jiang, a researcher with the University of Chicago says that the carbon footprint will be linear to the amount of computation you do. The bigger the AI model, the more computation is often required, and these frontier models are getting absolutely gigantic.
“There’s a whole material infrastructure that needs to be built to support AI,” says Alex Hanna, the director of research for Distributed AI Research Institute. She worked on Google’s Ethical AI team, but left the company in 2022 over the handling of a research paper that highlighted the environmental costs of AI.
The capital expenditures were spent mostly in data centers to fuel the company’s Artificial Intelligence endeavors, according to the company. The company said it expects to keep up that same level of spending throughout the year.
All major tech companies are going full throttle on AI. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has dubbed Google an “AI-first” company. The company added its A.I. Overview tool to the search engine and also released a bot to the world. Facebook parent Meta has added chatbots to several of its products. A partnership with OpenAI was announced by Apple last month.
Energy Depletion in Northern Virginia Data Centers: New Challenges for Artificial Intelligence and Smart Grids, as Revealed by the Washington Post
The data center industry has made Northern Virginia a hub. The data centers in that section of the state will need the equivalent of three months of energy to power 6 million homes, according to the Washington Post.
The thirst for electricity nationwide has become so intense that plans to decommission several coal plants have been delayed, according to another report by the Washington Post.
The report says that the infrastructure and electricity needed for these technologies are creating new challenges for meeting renewable energy commitments.
“One query to ChatGPT uses approximately as much electricity as could light one light bulb for about 20 minutes,” he says. “So, you can imagine with millions of people using something like that every day, that adds up to a really large amount of electricity.”
Most companies working on AI, including ChatGPT maker OpenAI, don’t disclose their emissions. A glimpse at the new data was released last week by Google. Deep within the 86-page report, Google said its greenhouse gas emissions rose last year by 48% since 2019. The data center’s energy consumption and emissions were attributed to the surge.
But, starting in 2023, Google wrote in its sustainability report that it was no longer “maintaining operational carbon neutrality.” The company says it’s still pushing for its net-zero goal in 2030.