Is AI the next big climate-change threat? We haven’t a clue

MIT Technology Review  July 29, 2019
Some predict that in the absence of significant innovation in materials, chip manufacturing and design, data centers’ AI workloads could account for a tenth of the world’s electricity usage by 2025 while others expect data center energy consumption to remain relatively flat over the next few years, in spite of a spike in AI-related activity. These widely diverging predictions highlight the uncertainty around AI’s impact on the future of large-scale computing and the ultimate implications for energy demand. But pessimistic forecasts ignore several important developments that could limit AI’s power grab. One of them is the rise of “hyperscale” data centers pioneered by companies like Facebook and Amazon. New kinds of microchips will also help. The biggest check on AI’s power consumption could be AI itself. The AI had already helped the firm cut its cooling bill 40% by making recommendations to human operators. AI will be used to optimize other aspects of data centers’ operations too…read more.

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