New York
CNN
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As Google has rushed to add artificial intelligence to its core products — sometimes with less-than-spectacular results — a problem is brewing behind the scenes: The systems needed to power its AI tools have taken the company by storm. There has been an enormous increase in the emission of greenhouse gases.
AI systems require many computers to operate. They require data centers to operate, essentially warehouses full of powerful computing equipment, sucking tons of energy. Process data and manage the heat of all those computers.
According to the tech giant's annual environmental report, the bottom line is that Google's greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 48 percent since 2019. The tech company blamed the growth primarily on “increased data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions.”
Now, Google is calling its goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2030 “highly ambitious” and said the pledge is “likely to be affected by uncertainty surrounding the future environmental impact of AI, which It's complicated and difficult to predict.” In other words: a sustainability Pushed by the company – which Once added The motto in its code of conduct is “do no evil” – made even more complex thanks to AI.
Google, like other tech rivals, has gone all-in on investing in AI, which is widely seen as the next big tech revolution that will change the way we live, work and consume information. ready for The company has integrated its Gemini generative AI technology into some of its core products, including search and Google Assistant, and CEO Sundar Pichai has called Google an “AI-first company”.
But AI comes with a major downside: Power-hungry data centers that Google and other big tech rivals are currently spending tens of billions of dollars each quarter to expand their AI ambitions.
Showing how much more demanding AI models are than traditional computing systems, the International Energy Agency estimates that a Google search query requires an average of 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, while a ChatGPT request typically but consumes about 2.9 watt hours. An October study by Dutch researcher Alex de Vries estimated that a “worst-case scenario” suggests that Google's AI systems could use as much electricity as the country of Ireland each year, assuming their current capacity. AI will be widely adopted in hardware and software. .
“As we further integrate AI into our products, emissions associated with increased energy demand from AI compute more intensively, and anticipated increases in our technological infrastructure investments,” Google said in its report. can be difficult to mitigate,” Google said in its published report. Monday It added that data center power consumption is currently growing faster than it can bring carbon-free power sources online.
Google said it expects its total greenhouse gas emissions to continue to rise before falling, as the company looks to invest in clean energy sources, such as wind and geothermal energy, to power its data centers. Is.
The large amount of water used as coolant to prevent data centers from overheating also presents a sustainability challenge. Google says it aims to replenish 120% of the fresh water used in its offices and data centers by 2030. Last year, it filled only 18% of that water, although that amount was up sharply from 6% the previous year.
Google is also among the companies that are exploring ways to use AI to fight climate change. For example, a 2019 Google DeepMind project trained an AI model on weather forecasts and historical wind turbine data to predict the availability of wind energy, leading to renewable energy for wind farmers. Helped to increase the value of the sources. The company has also used AI to suggest more fuel-efficient routes to drivers using Google Maps.
“We know that scaling and using AI to accelerate climate action is just as important as addressing the associated environmental impacts,” Google said in the report. said