THE PROLIFERATION OF AI: WHY IT’S NOT SO SUSTAINABLE

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly become a popular technology, beginning to revolutionise our lives. It’s hard to avoid ‘ChatGPT’ in conversations, the news, and buzz across social media. For businesses, AI offers significant opportunities to automate mundane, time-consuming tasks, like producing screeds of firstdrafted content. However, AI has a significant impact on the environment and poses a challenge for the world achieving Net Zero targets.

AI requires an enormous amount of energy, particularly during the training phase. Powering and cooling servers and datacentres results in an eye-watering carbon footprint.

Training a single AI model can be equivalent to the lifetime emissions of five cars, according to an OpenAI study. As well as the energy requirements needed for deep learning in AI systems, inefficient algorithms are also widely used and are not trained for sustainability, so consume more energy and resources than necessary.

Electronic waste is another issue that cannot be ignored. AI hardware quickly becomes obsolete as devices innovate, leading to the disposal of vast quantities of electronic waste. E-waste contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals that can harm the environment, leading to soil and water contamination.

Although AI's rapid improvement can be nerve-wracking to observe, it has the potential to make businesses more timeefficient. Legislation and expert scrutiny need to catch up and meet the moment to find the right balance between harnessing AI's power and mitigating its harmful environmental impact. Companies can reduce energy consumption of their AI systems by optimising algorithms, use more energyefficient hardware, and dispose of hardware via reputable, transparent e-waste recyclers. www.bigponddigital.co.uk