Generative artificial intelligence (AI) (capable of creating new text, images, video, audio or code) consumes “30 times more energy” than a conventional search enginewarned researcher Sasha Luccioni, who aims to raise awareness about the environmental impact of this new technology.
Recognized as one of the 100 most influential people in the world of AI by the American magazine Time in 2024, this Canadian of Russian origin has been trying to quantify the emissions of programs such as ChatGPT or Midjourney for several years.
“I find it especially disappointing that generative AI is used to search the Internet,” lamented the researcher, with whom AFP met in Montreal within the framework of the ALL IN conference dedicated to artificial intelligence.
Huge energy consumption
The linguistic models on which these AIs are based require enormous computing power to train on billions of data setswhich in turn requires powerful servers.
To this we must add the energy created to respond to user requests. Instead of extracting information, “as a search engine would do to find the capital of a country, for example,” these AIs “generate new information,” which makes the entire process “consume much more energy,” he noted.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), combining AI and the cryptocurrency sector, data centers will consume almost 460 TWh of electricity in 2022, or 2% of total global production.
A pioneer in research on the impact of AI on the climate, Sasha Luccioni participated in 2020 in the creation of a tool for developers to quantify the carbon footprint of executing code. Since then, “CodeCarbon” has been downloaded more than a million times.
Use judiciously
For the Canadian researcher, it is also necessary to “explain to people what generative AI can and cannot do, and at what cost.”
In her latest study, Luccioni, very active internationally, showed that Producing a high-definition image using artificial intelligence consumes as much energy as fully recharging your mobile phone’s battery..
At a time when more and more companies want to democratize this new technology by integrating it in various formats (chatbot, connected devices, online searches), Luccioni advocates “energy sobriety.”
The idea is not to oppose AI, he emphasized, but to choose the right tools and use them judiciously.
ee (afp, Times)