“It’s not a race, guys!”
For any film buffs who remember Scott Pilgrim, you will recall our unlikely hero had to fight his way past Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends, taking on the world in effect. I am thinking that just now the world needs to fight back, and this time not against a computer nerd but the very computers themselves.
One minute we are all amped up about saving the planet and then – ooh look, shiny thing that will do all my boring work for me. What’s that? How much energy does it use to do that? Who cares, it’s soooo shiny.
There are various statistics out there about how much energy AI uses to answer a simple question. Ask AI how much electricity it uses and, disturbingly, the answer it gives takes around 10x the amount of energy that a simple internet search does, same answer, bigger impact.
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced its CO2 emissions had increased by nearly 30% over the last four years, primarily due to data centre expansion, and Google’s greenhouse gas emissions last year were almost 50% up over a similar period, again due to data centre growth.
The International Energy Agency is predicting that by just two years hence, data centres will be using twice the energy they did in 2022 which, for those of us who cannot visualise that, it is as much energy as the whole of Japan consumes today. The drive to create clean energy just cannot keep up with the exponential demand AI is causing.
I am not saying we should abandon AI (who would listen anyway), just perhaps try and keep it relevant. Do we need an AI image of our pet in a tutu or to write an email we are just too bone-lazy to think through ourselves. Ramona Flowers’ seven exes were an obvious allegory, but maybe AI is providing the temptation, far more insidiously, for mankind to fully embrace those sins.
Film quote bastardisation alert: “AI, if your life had a face I would punch it.”