this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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AI

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, unlike the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals, which involves consciousness and emotionality. The distinction between the former and the latter categories is often revealed by the acronym chosen.

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Generative AI’s Energy Problem Today is Foundational (spectrum.ieee.org)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The actual paper (emphasis mine):

In 2021, Google’s total electricity consumption was 18.3 TWh, with AI accounting for 10%–15% of this total.2 The worst-case scenario suggests Google’s AI alone could consume as much electricity as a country such as Ireland (29.3 TWh per year), which is a significant increase compared to its historical AI-related energy consumption. However, this scenario assumes full-scale AI adoption utilizing current hardware and software, which is unlikely to happen rapidly. ... A more pragmatic projection of worldwide AI-related electricity consumption could be derived from NVIDIA’s sales in this segment. Given its estimated 95% market share in 2023, NVIDIA leads the AI servers market. The company is expected to deliver 100,000 of its AI servers in 2023.10 If operating at full capacity (i.e., 6.5 kW for NVIDIA's DGX A100 servers and 10.2 kW for DGX H100 servers), these servers would have a combined power demand of 650–1,020 MW. On an annual basis, these servers could consume up to 5.7–8.9 TWh of electricity. Compared to the historical estimated annual electricity consumption of data centers, which was 205 TWh,2 this is almost negligible.

The article:

de Vries has analyzed trends in AI energy use and predicted that current AI technology could be on track to annually consume as much electricity as the country of Ireland (29.3 terawatt-hours per year.)