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Title: What are the Carbon Costs of Asking an AI a Question?

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/1844...

"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."
The data centers hosting AI models "can devour more electricity than entire
cities." "Keeping those computers cool uses freshwater - about one bottle's
worth for every 100 words of text ChatGPT generates."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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