Is AI a Super Hero or a Villain in the Climate Crisis?
As we harness the power of AI for sustainability what of its own carbon footprint?
There's been much discussion about AI and sustainability and a lot of focus on its negative impact. It’s time some global organisation researched the net effect of AI on the climate at a macro level.
The scope of the study should be on both the pros and cons of AI: while it promises to make everything more efficient, from business processes to energy grids, the energy cost of training and running AI is a serious threat to #sustainability goals.
I tackle this paradox, the Jekyll and Hyde of AI, in my latest article for BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. Read the full article here.
The Dual Reality of AI:
✅ The promise: Accelerating development of solutions that give us smarter climate modelling and other good things such as hyper-efficient supply chains. It's an indispensable tool for climate action.
❌ The problem: The enormous carbon footprint of AI risks cancelling out those gains. In terms of sustainability, the computational and inference costs are immense.
Can we Afford Inefficiency?
We need to make an immediate pivot toward sustainable AI development. This means:
💡 Demanding model efficiency, smarter algorithms - not just bigger ones
🌍 Greener cloud that utilizes infrastructure powered by renewables
🧐 Transparency to learn the true environmental cost of the services that we consume
We have the technology to make AI a force for good. We just need the commitment.
