It's time to talk about the carbon footprint of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is an increasingly important element of science, medicine, and even the minutiae of our daily lives. Chatbots, digital assistants, and movie and music recommendations from streaming services all depend on "deep learning"--a process by which computer models are trained to recognize patterns in data. That training requires powerful computers and lots and lots of energy--and associated carbon emissions. One of the most elaborate deep learning models, designed to produce human-like language and known as GPT-3, requires an amount of energy equivalent to the yearly consumption of 126 Danish homes and creates a carbon footprint equivalent to traveling 700,000 kilometers by car for a single training session. Still, the computing power used in deep learning grew 300,000-fold between 2012 and 2018, and if that pace of growth continues it's not hard to see how artificial intelligence could have a major climate impact.