AI Energy Use Is Dirty
Experts believe that they know what the huge electricity burn of AI will be in the next year and the next decade. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says AI will use 99% of all electricity. Really.
According to The MIT Technology Review, in a story titled “We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard,” by 2028 “AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households.” At least that is short of Schmidt’s forecast.
Another troubling part of the MIT analysis is that green energy will take a backseat to energy supply for now. “Part of the reason is that data centers currently happen to be clustered in places with dirtier grids on average, like the coal-heavy grid in the mid-Atlantic region that includes Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. They also run constantly, including when cleaner sources may not be available.”
Wind, Solar, Nuclear
No one knows how fast wind, solar, and nuclear power will come online to the extent that fossil fuels will no longer be necessary. The answer may be never.
The future has unexpected issues. But here’s the problem: These estimates don’t capture the near future of how we’ll use AI. In that future, we won’t simply ping AI models with a question or two throughout the day, or have them generate a photo. Instead, leading labs are racing us toward a world where AI “agents” perform tasks for us without our supervising their every move, the authors write.
Finally, the actors said getting information from the companies that will build and use data centers is nearly impossible. Their energy generation will be so dirty that this is understandable.
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