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Rochester, New York – The Internet uses about 5-10% of the world's electrical energy. As artificial intelligence changes rapidly, how does the Internet use affect energy usage?
News10NBC's Emily Putnam spoke with Eric Hittinger, chairman of the Department of Public Policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, about the energy costs of AI and how it affects the environment.
Emily Putnam, News10NBC: “How is AI affecting the environment now?”
Eric Hittinger, Litt: “Now, the way AI impacts the environment is probably greater use of existing data centers, and greater use of existing data centers means more energy use, meaning more heat is being released into the environment.”
Most AI data centers don't create their own energy. They pull it out of the electric grid just like you did when you light your home.
“It makes very reasonable for AI to increase its power usage by 1, 2, 3%. This doesn't sound much, but that means there are many new power plants needed.
You may be familiar with popular AI language models such as ChatGpt. “There's a certain data and energy footprint just to build a large-scale language model,” Hittinger said.
Ask AI questions and it will be sent to a data center that runs through the model.
“In fact, they use a computer bank just to handle your questions. Now, this computer bank is only used for a few seconds to get answers right away,” Hittittinger said.
However, there are over 1 billion searches every day on ChatGPT, which adds that energy. “If you run with 50,000 computers in a room, it gets quite warm, so there's a kind of cooling system,” Hittatinger said.
Some data centers use traditional HVAC systems to cool computers, while others use natural water sources.
“In most cases, the environmental footprint of a data center comes from remote energy use, so there is no smoke stack in the data center.
At one point, Hittanger believes that electricity costs will win. “Energy usage gives a kind of limitation on how fast AI can grow in terms of processing power, as at some point these tech companies spend billions of dollars a year on electricity to run AI data centers.
Safety was another major concern for AI. This month, Openai, the parent company of ChatGpt, announced plans to deploy parental controls, including the ability for parents to link to teenage accounts.
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