The Daily Populous Wednesday July 3rd, 2024 evening edition
Authored by bbc.com and submitted by DairyFarmerOnCrack

AI drives 48% increase in Google emissions

7 hours ago By Imran Rahman-Jones , Technology reporter Share

Google's greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 were 48% higher than in 2019, according to its latest environmental report. The tech giant puts it down to the increasing amounts of energy needed by its data centres, exacerbated by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI). AI-powered services involve considerably more computer power - and so electricity - than standard online activity, prompting a series of warnings about the technology's environmental impact. Google's target is to reach net zero emissions by 2030 but it admits that "as we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging."

In its 2024 Environmental Report, Google says it is "due to increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute." Data centres are essentially massive collections of computer servers - and AI needs a huge amount of them. A generative AI system - such as ChatGPT - might use around 33 times more energy than machines running task-specific software, according to a recent study. However, Google's report also reveals large global disparities in the impacts of its data centres. Most of the centres in Europe and the Americas get the majority of their energy from carbon-free sources. This compares with data centres in the Middle East, Asia and Australia, which use far less carbon-free energy. Overall, Google says about two thirds of its energy is derived from carbon-free sources.

"If you actually go into data centre, it's really hot and really noisy," says Tom Jackson, professor of information and knowledge management at Loughborough University. "People don't realise everything they're storing in the cloud is having an impact on their digital carbon footprint," he says. Prof Jackson runs the Digital Decarbonisation Design Group, which tries to measure and find solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of data usage. "Data providers have to work closely with large organisations to help them move away from storing so much of their dark data," he says. Dark data is data which has been collected by organisations but which has either been used once or not at all. However, storing it on chips still takes up large amounts of energy even when it is not being used. "On average, 65% of the data an organisation stores is dark data," says Prof Jackson. He commends Google's target of reaching net zero in its data centres by 2030, but says it will be "really tough."

Mindful-O-Melancholy on July 3rd, 2024 at 12:25 UTC »

And somehow that burden will probably get pushed onto the consumer. Why do we even need AI in so many unnecessary facets of our lives? Google has became horrible to search for anything since adding it.

Sure, in the medical field it is very useful, but pretty much everywhere else it’s not necessary.

bearcat09 on July 3rd, 2024 at 11:11 UTC »

These AI data centers can use up to 400 megawatts. A unit at a nuclear power plant produces on average 800-1200 megawatts.

And guess what....we are building data centers everywhere and aren't building any new nuclear power plants.

nervousinflux on July 3rd, 2024 at 11:05 UTC »

This isn't much of a surprise when years ago they reported on how much green house gasses were being created by crypto farming and the same nividia tech powers both ventures.