News/Environment
Data Centre Boom Strains Australian Power Grid, Threatens Price Hikes
The rapid growth of data centres in Australia is straining the electricity grid and could lead to higher power prices, according to energy experts. Soaring demand for data centres: Australia is a top hub for data centres globally, with 214 facilities nationwide. The explosive growth of cloud computing and AI is expected to drive exponential expansion in the coming years: One large data centre can consume as much electricity as 50,000 homes. Data centres currently use an estimated 5% of Australia's grid power, projected to rise to 8-15% by 2030. David Dzienciol of data centre operator NEXTDC believes electricity demand...
read Jul 26, 2024IBM Says Quantum Computing May Solve AI’s Energy and Cost Crisis
The exponential growth in AI training costs is raising sustainability and equity concerns, but quantum computing may offer a solution. The AI training cost problem: The rapid increase in AI usage is driving up energy consumption and costs, which could surpass the US GDP by 2030 and limit AI's potential if left unchecked. ChatGPT queries consume at least 10 times more energy than Google searches, contributing to the unsustainable growth in AI's energy footprint. By 2030, the cost to train a single AI model once could exceed worldwide IT spending, creating a hard ceiling for the technology's development and accessibility....
read Jul 25, 2024AI’s Carbon Footprint Continues to Raise Concerns about Environmental Sustainability
AI's carbon footprint and increasing energy demand raise concerns about its environmental sustainability, with AI models projected to require substantial electricity and water for cooling in the coming years. Urgent action is needed to address these issues before they escalate into another obstacle to the planet's well-being. Key takeaways: The carbon footprint of generative AI models like ChatGPT is overwhelming, and their energy and water demands are becoming increasingly unsustainable: AI models are projected to require half of the United Kingdom's water supply for cooling by 2027. There is a pressing need to balance technological advancement with ecological well-being, as...
read Jul 25, 2024The Triple Threat of Climate Change, AI and Aging Is Reshaping America’s Future
Climate change, AI, and the care crisis converge as a triple threat reshaping America's landscape, according to discussions at the country's largest longevity conference: The dangerous impact of climate change on cognitive health: The brutal heat waves caused by climate change are not just uncomfortable but dangerous, impairing executive functions, weakening neural networks, and disrupting sleep patterns, especially for older adults. AI's potential to disrupt the job market and cause long-term structural unemployment: While AI is revolutionizing industries, it also poses a significant threat by potentially displacing millions of jobs across various sectors, reshaping the entire economy. The mounting care...
read Jul 24, 2024AI-Powered Maps Are Enabling Better Decision Making in the Face of Climate Change Uncertainty
Maps are emerging as a vital tool for decision-making in the face of climate change uncertainty. Modern digital maps, fueled by GIS and AI, are helping people make informed choices about travel, personal carbon emissions reduction, and navigating extreme weather events. Key benefits of GIS maps: Maps are powerful because they use location to index data, allowing simultaneous consideration of various factors like the earth, atmosphere, people, politics, economics, and health: GIS maps played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic, with tools like the Johns Hopkins University dashboard helping individuals and policymakers make informed decisions. Maps can predict future...
read Jul 24, 2024How Chevron Is Using Generative AI to Revolutionize the Energy Industry
Chevron, a multinational oil and gas company, is leveraging generative AI to unlock valuable insights from its massive datasets and enhance operations in the energy sector. Harnessing AI for complex data processing: With vast amounts of data generated from oil and gas operations, Chevron has been utilizing GPUs since 2008 to handle computationally intensive workloads, and is now integrating generative AI tools to further analyze and extract value from its datasets: A single seismic survey in New Mexico can generate a petabyte-sized file, requiring 100 exaflops of computing power to process and visualize for decision-making purposes. Chevron is one of...
read Jul 23, 2024How AI Is Creating a Future of More Sustainable and Efficient Agriculture
The AI revolution in agriculture is transforming how farmers interact with their land and crops, promising increased efficiency, sustainability, and yield. AI technologies like precision agriculture, crop monitoring, predictive analytics, and automated farming are making agriculture more manageable, precise, and productive. AI as a companion to the farmer: AI is transforming how farmers interact with their land and crops, with companies like John Deere leading the way with AI tractors and equipment that can plant seeds and apply inputs with high accuracy. Precision agriculture allows farmers to analyze data from soil conditions to weather patterns to make informed decisions. AI...
read Jul 22, 2024AI-Powered Weather Model Promises Accurate, Efficient Forecasts and Climate Insights
Google researchers have developed NeuralGCM, a new weather prediction model that integrates AI with traditional physics-based methods, potentially providing accurate forecasts more efficiently and cost-effectively. Bridging the divide between AI and traditional weather modeling: NeuralGCM combines the strengths of machine learning and conventional weather prediction techniques: The model uses a conventional approach to calculate large-scale atmospheric changes and incorporates AI to correct errors that accumulate on smaller scales, such as cloud formations and regional microclimates. This selective injection of AI aims to enhance the accuracy of predictions while maintaining the reliability of traditional physics-based models. Potential for long-term climate modeling...
read Jul 20, 2024Small Language Models are Making AI More Accessible and Environmentally Sustainable
The rise of small language models from OpenAI, Nvidia, and Hugging Face signals a major shift in the AI industry towards more accessible and efficient natural language processing capabilities. Small Wonders: How Compact AI Models are Changing Edge Computing; Hugging Face's SmolLM, designed to run directly on mobile devices, pushes AI processing to the edge, addressing critical issues of data privacy and latency: SmolLM comes in three sizes: 135 million, 360 million, and 1.7 billion parameters, enabling sophisticated AI-driven features on mobile devices with minimal latency and maximum privacy. Nvidia and Mistral AI's collaboration has produced Mistral-Nemo, a 12-billion parameter...
read Jul 19, 2024The AI Boom and Global Temperature Increases Are Fueling Unprecedented Electricity Usage
A surge in global electricity demand, fueled by rising temperatures, economic growth, and the AI boom, is set to reach its fastest pace in nearly two decades, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency. Record-breaking demand growth: The IEA forecasts that global electricity demand will grow by approximately 4% in 2024 and 2025, the highest annual growth rate since 2007, excluding exceptional rebound years following the global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. Intense heatwaves in the first half of 2024 have already boosted demand and strained electricity systems, with increasing use of air conditioning expected to be...
read Jul 17, 2024Google-Backed Cropin Is Using AI to Predict the Future of Food Production
The acquisition of Cropin by Google is a significant development in the agriculture technology sector, with implications for the future of food production and supply: Cropin's AI-powered predictive intelligence: Cropin's Sage solution, powered by Google's Gemini AI model, converts the world's agricultural landscape into a proprietary grid-based map and delivers precise predictive intelligence for 13 vital crops that account for 80% of global food demand: By leveraging historical data on productivity, climate, farm practices, and soil, Sage enables decision-makers to ask questions about crop performance and life cycles in their native language. This real-time intelligence solution aims to forecast future...
read Jul 9, 2024The Washington Post Launches Chatbot to Answer Questions About Climate Change
The Washington Post launches a climate-focused AI chatbot to provide readers with personalized answers to their questions about climate change, the environment, and sustainable energy. Key features of Climate Answers chatbot: The Washington Post's new AI-powered tool, Climate Answers, is designed to offer readers a unique and interactive way to engage with the outlet's extensive climate reporting: Accessible through the homepage, app, and articles, the chatbot allows users to ask specific questions about climate change, such as "Should I get solar panels for my home?" or "Where in the US are sea levels rising the fastest?" Climate Answers uses the...
read Jul 3, 2024AI Uncovers EV Adoption Barriers, Sparking New Climate Research Opportunities
Electric vehicle transition facing challenges: The growth in electric vehicle sales has slowed this year, particularly for market leader Tesla, raising concerns about achieving emissions reduction goals in Massachusetts where transportation accounts for the largest share of carbon emissions. Potential factors contributing to the slowdown include high vehicle prices, concerns about limited driving range, insufficient charging infrastructure, and waning consumer confidence in Tesla CEO Elon Musk. A recent survey found that many EV drivers are considering switching back to gas-powered vehicles, further highlighting the challenges in the transition to electric mobility. Leveraging AI to understand consumer sentiments: Researcher Omar Asensio...
read Jul 3, 2024Google’s AI Emissions Surge Threatens Net-Zero Goal, Raises Sustainability Concerns
Google's AI-driven emissions increase raises concerns amid net-zero goals: Google's greenhouse gas emissions rose 13% last year, largely due to the increasing energy demands of artificial intelligence (AI), despite the company's aim to become carbon neutral by 2030. AI adoption poses challenges for emissions reduction efforts: The rapid growth and integration of AI into Google's products is driving up the company's energy consumption and associated emissions, making it more difficult to meet its sustainability targets: Google's data center electricity consumption grew by 17% last year, accounting for 7-10% of global data center electricity usage. Since 2019, Google's total emissions have...
read Jun 25, 2024AI Discovers Rare-Earth-Free Magnet, Promising Cheaper, Greener EVs and Tech
UK company Materials Nexus has used its AI platform to discover a new rare-earth-free permanent magnet called MagNex, 200 times faster than traditional methods and with the potential to significantly reduce material costs and carbon emissions in magnet production. Growing demand for rare earth magnets in electric motors: The shift towards electric vehicles is driving a rapid rise in demand for compact, high-power motors that rely on rare earth magnets, with Materials Nexus estimating a tenfold increase in permanent magnet demand by 2030 in the EV industry alone. Over 80% of modern electric vehicles use permanent magnet motors, which are...
read Jun 21, 2024AI’s Power Surge Strains Grid, Spurs Fossil Fuel Use Despite Green Pledges
The rapid growth of artificial intelligence is straining the electricity grid, leading tech companies to pursue ambitious clean energy projects that may be overly optimistic, while fossil fuel use expands to meet the soaring demand. The AI power crunch: AI's voracious appetite for electricity is driving a nationwide data center building boom that is challenging the power grid and the tech industry's sustainability commitments: Training AI models and executing even simple AI tasks require increasingly complex computations that consume significantly more electricity compared to traditional computing. Major tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are constructing sprawling data center...
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