Existential threats to the human race include asteroids, supervolcanoes and nuclear war.
Artificial intelligence might put paid to us too. But how? Until recently, there were two basic scenarios: one in which a super-smart computer decides the world is better off without humans – and turns against us, Terminator style; the other in which a powerful, but essentially mindless, AI system follows some poorly thought-out instructions to the letter – heedless of unforeseen and calamitous side-effects. This is the Magician’s Apprentice scenario, which Tom Chivers considers here.
Now, thanks to a piece of timely research by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, a third scenario presents itself – AI will kill us through global warming, because the neural networks used to train AI models use so much energy.
The findings are the subject of an MIT Technology Review article by Karen Hao:
“In a new paper, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, performed a life cycle assessment for training several common large AI models. They found that the process can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent—nearly five times the lifetime emissions of the average American car (and that includes manufacture of the car itself).”
By way of further comparison, the average human being generates 11,023 pounds of CO2 in the course of a year, and the average American human being 36,156 pounds.
Machine learning is so energy hungry because it works through what Hao describes as “exhaustive trial and error.” This requires the application of colossal quantities of brute processing power – and therefore lots and lots of electricity.
We tend to think of digital technologies as belonging to the clean, green, ‘dematerialised’ economy of the future – completely different from the smoke-belching heavy industries of the past.
But cyberspace is an energy-hog too. For instance, it’s estimated that the data-processing tasks required to make Bitcoin work consumed 30 terawatt hours of electricity in 2017 – about the same as the whole of the Republic of Ireland. Meanwhile the global banking system consumes around 100 terawatt hours.
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