Artificial intelligence has progressed from sci-fi fantasy to mainstream reality. AI now powers online tools from search engines to voice assistants and it is used in everything from medical imaging analysis to autonomous vehicles. But the advance of AI will soon collide with another pressing issue: energy consumption.
Much like cryptocurrencies today, AI risks becoming a target for criticism and regulation based on its high electricity appetite. Partisans are forming into camps, with AI optimists extolling continued progress through more compute power, while pessimists are beginning to portray AI power usage as wasteful and even dangerous. Attacks echo those leveled at crypto mining in recent years. Undoubtedly, there will be further efforts to choke off AI innovation by cutting its energy supply.
The pessimists raise some valid points. Developing ever-more capable AI does require vast computing resources. For example, the amount of compute used to train OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 reportedly equaled 800 petaflops of processing power—on par with the 20 most powerful supercomputers in the world combined. Similarly, ChatGPT receives somewhere on the order of hundreds of millions of queries each day. Estimates suggest that the electricity required to respond to all these queries might be around 1 GWh daily, enough to power the daily energy consumption of about 33,000 U.S. households. Demand is expected to further increase in the future.
In a sense none of this is new. Almost since the dawn of the internet, there have been concerns about energy consumption. As the network of servers, data centers, and connected devices has expanded, so too has electricity demand. Activists have long pointed out that the continuous operation of these energy-intensive facilities and apparatuses, necessary for maintaining the 24/7 availability of online services, leads to environmental impacts.
Just as with cryptocurrencies and the early internet, AI’s energy consumption may seem shocking without proper context. Critics will inevitably cast the meteoric growth in AI compute as excessive, unnecessary and risky. However, if AI makes workers more productive by, for example, saving programmers time writing code, researchers time finding and reading articles, and ordinary office employees effort engaging in repetitive tasks and document writing, AI will invariably save a lot of energy as well.
Furthermore, these energy savings don’t take account other direct benefits of AI. Although not the only factor, adding compute enhances AI capabilities from natural language processing to computer vision. While just throwing compute at problems doesn’t guarantee progress, it does reliably provide meaningful improvements. Compute serves as the fuel for AI innovation.
Unfortunately, just as with crypto mining, nuances get lost as the different factions square off in the public arena. These debates can quickly turn emotional. With climate change concerns prominent, restrictions on electricity usage are likely to gain momentum as a tactic activists use to oppose disfavored industries. Think “Operation Choke Point” for power usage.
We’ve already seen officials target sectors they deem objectionable by pressuring the banks and payment networks that provide them with financial services. Industries like firearms dealers, payday lenders, and fossil fuel companies have become targets. Despite any evidence of illegality, these industries face pressure from politicians and activists seeking to change their behavior by cutting them off from mainstream financial institutions.
Now with some questioning whether AI development should be curtailed, analogous pressure campaigns in the context of AI compute seem inevitable. Just as banks are being coerced to restrict counter-parties for political reasons, power companies may soon face similar pressure with respect to their most energy-intensive customers.
While activists’ fears aren’t entirely unfounded—there are real risks from AI that need to be considered and addressed—blanket restrictions on electricity use are the wrong approach. Basing power usage rights on political favorability puts us on a slippery slope. For all that divides Americans lately, access to electricity remains thankfully uncontroversial.
Rather than pick winners and losers, policy makers should aim to provide reliable and affordable electricity to all law-abiding, bill-paying customers. Industries like cryptocurrency and AI will naturally improve energy efficiency over time, given this is already a priority within these industries. They should be given they space they need to mature.
We shouldn’t fall for attempts to choke off emerging technologies’ electricity supply just because some industries happen to have gotten caught up in today’s politics. With smart innovation-friendly policy, meeting our energy needs and environmental goals can go hand-in-hand.
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