AI & Sustainability: The elephant in the room?
The uptake and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gathering pace globally. AI is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks associated with intelligent human-beings. The term is frequently applied to developing systems endowed with intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalise, or learn from past experiences. Whilst some claim AI cannot yet outperform humans in these aspects, others believe some programmes have attained the performance levels of human experts and professionals in executing certain specific tasks, such as medical diagnosis, computer search engines, voice or handwriting recognition, and chatbots. Psychologists characterise human intelligence (HI) by the combination of many diverse abilities. Research in AI has focused chiefly on the following components of intelligence: learning, reasoning, problem solving, perception, and using language. Overall uptake is increasing. For example, universities globally are now allowing students to use AI in their studies to varying degrees and use in industry and the professions is growing. There is potential to use AI in all types of applications, for sustainable cities, for increasing performance and outputs across many industries and professions, to reduce time consuming laborious tasks, to make smarter decisions and so on.
Whilst AI could make humans more efficient and reduce tedious activities, what about its environmental footprint? Data centres are needed to provide the data which AI mines to produce its’ outputs. The more AI uptake, the more data centres we need. The elephant in the room is the energy demands of AI data centres. Pew Research Centre in Washington DC stated total annual U.S. electricity consumption hit a record high in 2024 and that ceiling could rise if data centres continue expanding at their current pace. They predict US data centre energy consumption will double by 2030 – in 4 years time. What measures are in place, or should be in place to measure, record, and offset this energy use? Are we in danger , with our current approach, of fiddling while Rome burns.
Come and hear our diverse expert panel discuss this issue.