AI global surge creates environmental paradox

Significance

This creates a paradox, since, while AI-generated solutions are crucial to help solve the climate emergency, their very deployment is also adding to the problem. To tackle this, researchers in both academia and businesses are seeking to produce hardware and software that increase AI’s energy efficiency.

Impacts

• There will be growing discussions about the trade-offs between the accuracy and energy efficiency of AI models.
• There will be increasing efforts to develop a standardised test to compare the environmental impacts of different AI models.
• The data centre industry will face rising pressure to increase the contribution of renewables in their energy mix.