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The climate cost of the AI revolution • Wim Vanderbauwhede

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ChatGPT and other AI applications such as Midjourney have pushed "Artificial Intelligence" high on the hype cycle. In this article, I want to focus specifically on the energy cost of training and using applications like ChatGPT, what their widespread adoption could mean for global CO₂ emissions, and what we could do to limit these emissions. Training of large AI models requires a lot of electricity. However, for a modest growth scenario where there would be a hundred very popular AI-based services in the entire world, I estimate that the global CO₂ emissions from training AI are likely to remain relatively small. For that same modest growth scenario, with a hundred very popular AI-based services in the entire world, the electricity consumption resulting from the use of these services would lead to unsustainable increases in global CO₂ emissions. Using renewables to power AI is not the solution. Large scale adoption of AI would lead to a huge increase in electricity consumption, much mo

The climate cost of the AI revolution ChatGPT and other AI applications such as Midjourney have pushed “Artificial Intelligence” high on the hype cycle. In this article, I want to focus specifically on the energy cost of training and using applications like ChatGPT, what their widespread adoption could mean for global CO₂ emissions, and what we could do to limit these emissions. Key points Training of large AI models is not the problem Training of large AI models requires a lot of electricity. However, for a modest growth scenario where there would be a hundred very popular AI-based services i

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