AI ‘accelerating’ climate crisis, uses 30 times more energy than search engine: analyst

If you care about the environment, think twice about using AI.

Generative artificial intelligence used 30 times more energy than a traditional search engine, warned researcher Sasha Luccioni, on a mission to raise awareness about the environmental impact of the hot new technology.

Recognised as one of the 100 most influential people in the world of AI by the American magazine Time in 2024, the Canadian computer scientist of Russian origin has sought for several years to quantify the emissions of programmes like ChatGPT or Midjourney.

“I find it particularly disappointing that generative AI is used to search the internet,” lamented the researcher, speaking on the sidelines of the ALL IN artificial intelligence conference in Montreal.

The language models on which the programmes are based require enormous computing capacities to train on billions of data points, necessitating powerful servers.