The rise of artificial intelligence comes with rising needs for power

Advances in technology can allow you to order food by voice or unlock your phone with your face, but those new capabilities could take a toll on the environment. Enhanced tech capabilities are being developed through the use of artificial-intelligence approaches like neural networks, which detect patterns in speech and images by training programs across countless data points. That process constantly crunches reams of information on power-hungry servers in data centers that use a substantial amount of energy to power, cool and monitor the servers. The result: Training a neural network can emit 17 times more carbon dioxide than an average American does in a year, and five times the lifetime emissions of an average car. Those are the findings of a recent paper by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, which highlighted the substantial power generated by AI technologies.