What would it take to make AI ‘greener’?
What would it take to make AI ‘greener’? On the one hand, we first need to collectively recognize that there are tangible costs to the creation and use of AI systems – and, in fact, they can be quite large. GPT-3, a recent powerful language model by OpenAI, is estimated to have consumed enough energy in training to leave a carbon footprint equivalent to driving a car from Earth to the moon and back.
There are beneficial impacts that AI can have on our relationship to the environment as well. A comprehensive study in 2020 assessed the potential impact of AI on the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, encompassing societal, economic and environmental outcomes. The researchers found that AI could positively enable 93% of the environmental targets, including the creation of smart and low-carbon cities; Internet-of-Things devices and appliances that can modulate their consumption of electricity; better integration of renewable energy through smart grids; the identification of desertification trends via satellite imagery; and combating marine pollution.
AI use cases in industry can serve to help the environment and reduce carbon emissions. For example, OYAK Cimento, a Turkish based cement manufacturing group is using AI to significantly reduce their carbon footprint. According to Berkan Fidan, Performance & Process Director at OYAK Cimento: “Enterprise AI-assisted process control helps to increase operational efficiency, which means higher production with lower unit energy consumption. If we consider a single moderate capacity level cement plant with 1 million tons of cement production, just a 1% of additional clinker reduction – with AI-assisted process and quality control – produces a reduction of around 7,000 tons of CO2 per year. This equals CO2 absorption of 320,000 trees in a year.”
According to the think tank Chatham House, cement accounts for approximately 8% of CO2 emissions. Thus, there is a clear environmental need to improve efficiency in cement manufacturing and one tool to do so is AI.
Another example of AI having a positive environmental impact concerns Entel, the largest Chilean telecommunications company, and sensor data to identify forest fires. It takes a collaborative effort to successfully fight forest fires that have been raging in many parts of the world, including Greece and Northern California. Chile is frequently impacted by severe climate change and catastrophic weather conditions, which previously led to the worst wildfire in Chile’s history in 2017 that resulted in the burning of around 714,000 acres. For a country steeped in natural wonder, with a population and economy that depends heavily on thriving forests, any type of wildfire is a devastating tragedy.
Entel Ocean, the digital unit of Entel, sought to identify fires earlier using IoT sensors.
