Author: Nilay Patel
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
We’ve been talking about AI a lot on Decoder lately; it’s unavoidable. But there’s one piece of feedback we’ve gotten that I really wanted to spend some time on: how the lightning-fast explosion of AI tools affects the climate.
After all, to run AI at scale, we need to build a lot of data centers and pack them full of power-hungry GPUs. That takes a lot of energy, and whether using all that juice is worth it comes up frequently when we talk about AI. It’s both a matter of practical concern — “can our aging grid support all of this?” — and a moral objection — “we shouldn’t build these systems because they’ll wreck the planet.”
What’s particularly complicated is that big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have spent the...
Continue reading…
Continue reading...
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
We’ve been talking about AI a lot on Decoder lately; it’s unavoidable. But there’s one piece of feedback we’ve gotten that I really wanted to spend some time on: how the lightning-fast explosion of AI tools affects the climate.
After all, to run AI at scale, we need to build a lot of data centers and pack them full of power-hungry GPUs. That takes a lot of energy, and whether using all that juice is worth it comes up frequently when we talk about AI. It’s both a matter of practical concern — “can our aging grid support all of this?” — and a moral objection — “we shouldn’t build these systems because they’ll wreck the planet.”
What’s particularly complicated is that big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have spent the...
Continue reading…
Continue reading...