The technological development of countries has drastically increased in recent years, but greater development implies a greater edition of resources, most of which are not renewable. could lead to a global collapse. One of the main causes of this is the rise of artificial intelligence, which reaches more people every day What resource are we talking about?
The rise of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence has gained enormous popularity in recent years. Nowadays millions of people use daily assistants who are powered by this tool and the most popular applications have also integrated them in their platforms.
However, more and more personalities and organizations are coming out Elon Musk to the Davos-Forum They warn that this technology generates an enormous consumption of resources, so that humanity could be close to the global collapse.
AI was previously questioned because of its great impact on the emissions as a result of the production of CO2, but it is now assumed that it could also be responsible for a global collapse of the energy sector. This is because data centers use hundreds of chips that make billions of automatic calculations to ‘train’ artificial intelligence and then, as soon as it is released to the public, generate the reactions to them.
This entire process requires huge amounts of energy, which could lead us to a situation Energy collapse. He Dr. Diego Slezak, Director of the Applied Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), explains this easier.
He says it is “Pizza boxes that contain video card chips … Each video card uses 100 watts, and if thousands are active all the time, that is at least 100,000 watts with constant use in a data center.”
For its part, the World Economic Forum was also called Davos-Forumsays that ““Generative AI systems now need up to 33 times more energy to complete a task than a task-specific system.”For example a Google search. Nowadays The development of these instruments represents 2 to 3% of global energy production and could increase even further.
The guilty of the collapse of the world is not only AI
According to Elon Musk “The simultaneous growth of electric mobility and AI creates an excessive demand for the generation of electrical energy”where this problem is associated with the world of Cars on batteries.
In electric cars, the amount of technology based on artificial intelligence (AI) increases, which will increase consumption and will therefore require more energy, while on the other hand, microchip and battery factories also use much more energy due to the increase in The global energy production production.
A possible setback in the energy transition
With a view to the enormous demand, one solution could be the construction of new electricity centers, but unfortunately it is not assumed that they can all be ecological, since the demand is enormous. So there would be no alternative then to return to traditional systems such as gas. coal and nuclear energy, which would be a major setback for the objectives in the field of carbon neutrality.
Alex de VriesA Dutch data scientist has been conducting research into the side effects of digital technologies for more than ten years and asks people to “take a step back” before they start using these types of tools:
“If you start thinking about the challenge you have and what the best way is to solve them with all other available technologies, you don’t need AI 9 out of 10 times”. In addition, it indicates that companies have to report transparently and accurately how much energy they spend on their AI models.
In short, the large increase in the demand for electricity could force countries to return to traditional systems, which would cause a major setback in the sustainable development objectives. Science is making increasing progress in the field of sustainable energy, for example with the energy treasure found in the sea. More visibility must be given to the impact of AI, so that the population becomes better aware of the way in which a few entries in Google can influence our future.