Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I'm the "Environmental Bank" with all the worldwide environmental issues. As the AI's usage increases, the emission rate rapidly boosted, contributing to the climate change. In which rate does AI contributed to the emission rate? What problems did expanded use of AI engendered?
What is the issue?
Carbon carbon emissions surged nearly 50% compared to 2019, along with rising by 13% over the year 2023, producing 14.3 million metric tons of CO2 pollution, which is equivalent to the amount of CO2 that 38 gas-fired power plants might release annually. Due to the sudden increase in the carbon emission rate, it became increasingly difficult to achieve its initial goal of cutting its planet-heating pollution in half by 2030 compared to a 2019 baseline.
What are the factors to increase the carbon emission rate?
- Rapid advancements in and demand for AI
Since AI models require substantial amounts of energy as they perform a. number of calculations in a short period, this leads to higher energy consumption.
- The integration of generative AI into Google’s products
As the Google transited into the Gemini era, along redesigning of Google Search with generative AI, this led to greater energy demands.
What are the Google’s efforts to minimize environmental impact?
- Development of more energy-efficient AI models, hardware, and data centers: Google strives to minimize its environmental impact by developing more energy-efficient AI models, hardware, and data centers. This includes efforts to reduce the energy consumption associated with AI computations and data center operations.
- Improvement of the training efficiency of the fifth-generation TPU by 39% using techniques like quantization: Google has boosted the training efficiency of its fifth-generation TPU by 39% using techniques such as quantization, which helps lower the energy requirements for training AI models.
- Implementation of a water stewardship program, offsetting 18% of water usage in 2023: The deployment of the carbon-intelligent computing platforms and demand response capabilities at its data centers to optimize energy use. These platforms help manage and reduce carbon emissions by adjusting energy consumption based on the availability of renewable energy sources
- Deployment of the carbon-intelligent computing platforms and demand response capabilities at data centers: In 2023, the program offset 18% of the company's water usage, contributing to its broader sustainability efforts
What about other tech giants?
- Microsoft's total carbon emissions rose nearly 30% since 2020, largely due to data center construction.
- Amazon's emissions slightly decreased by 0.4% between 2021 and 2022, but are still up almost 40% since 2019.
What are the expert concerns?
The growth trend is super-fast, This is something I’m concerned about.
Fengqi You (an energy engineering professor at Cornell University)
Wrap-up
I think this news well reflects the severity of the "digital carbon footprint." Most people have heard of "carbon footprint", yet aren't aware of the term "digital carbon footprint". Even though the "digital carbon footprint" hugely contributes to climate change. Therefore, I would be thankful if people now be aware that their use of electronic devices or even applications in there, could have a significant impact on Mother Earth. As we are currently in the 4th industrial era, disposing of all electronic devices is inevitable, yet we must at least reduce the utilization of our devices.
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