Amid all the hysteria about ChatGPT and co, one thing is being missed: how energy-intensive the technology is
What to do when surrounded by people who are losing their minds about the Newest New Thing? Answer: reach for the Gartner Hype Cycle, an ingenious diagram that maps the progress of emerging technology through five phases: the “technology trigger”, which is followed by a rapid rise to the “peak of inflated expectations”; this is succeeded by a rapid decline into the “trough of disillusionment”, after which begins a gentle climb up the “slope of enlightenment” – before eventually (often years or decades later) reaching the “plateau of productivity”.
Given the current hysteria about AI, I thought I’d check to see where it is on the chart. It shows that generative AI (the polite term for ChatGPT and co) has just reached the peak of inflated expectations. That squares with the fevered predictions of the tech industry (not to mention governments) that AI will be transformative and will soon be ubiquitous. This hype has given rise to much-anguished fretting about its impact on employment, misinformation, politics etc, and also to a lot of anxious extrapolations about an existential risk to humanity.
All of this serves the useful function – for the tech industry, at least – of diverting attention from the downsides of the technology we are already experiencing: bias, inscrutability, unaccountability and its tendency to “hallucinate”, to name just four. And, in particular, the current moral panic also means that a fundamental question is missing from public discourse: what would a world suffused with this technology do to the planet? This is worrying because its environmental impact will, at best, be significant and, at worst, could be problematic.
How come? Because AI requires staggering amounts of computing power. And since computers require electricity, and the necessary GPUs (graphics processing units) run very hot (and therefore need cooling), the technology consumes electricity at a colossal rate. This, in turn, means CO2 emissions on a large scale – about which the industry is extraordinarily coy, while simultaneously boasting about using offsets and other wheezes to mime carbon neutrality.
The implication is stark: the realization of the industry’s dream of “AI everywhere” (as Google’s boss once put it) would bring about a world dependent on a technology that is not only flaky but also has a formidable – and growing – environmental footprint. Shouldn’t we be paying more attention to this?
