“The carbon cost of asking an artificial intelligence model a single text question can be measured in grams of CO2…” writes the Washington Post. And while an individual’s impact may be low, what about the collective impact of all users?
“A Google search takes about 10 times less energy than a ChatGPT query, according to a 2024 analysis from Goldman Sachs — although that may change as Google makes AI responses a bigger part of search.”
For now, a determined user can avoid prompting Google’s default AI-generated summaries by switching over to the “web” search tab, which is one of the options alongside images and news. Adding “-ai” to the end of a search query also seems to work. Other search engines, including DuckDuckGo, give you the option to turn off AI summaries….
Using AI doesn’t just mean going to a chatbot and typing in a question. You’re also using AI every time an algorithm organizes your social media feed, recommends a song or filters your spam email… [T]here’s not much you can do about it other than using the internet less. It’s up to the companies that are integrating AI into every aspect of our digital lives to find ways to do it with less energy and damage to the planet.
More points from the article:
- Two researchers tested the performance of 14 AI language models, and found larger models gave more accurate answers, “but used several times more energy than smaller models.”
