She said each interaction with ChatGPT was like pouring half a liter of water on the floor.
“We waste a lot of water with these systems, and very few people realize that this is a major problem,” she said. “That’s why I personally believe that the number one priority for the sector should be sustainability. Not the race for AI.
Earlier this year, Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, said an energy breakthrough would be needed for future artificial intelligence.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said an energy breakthrough would be needed for future artificial intelligence.Credit: Bloomberg
“There is no way to achieve this without a breakthrough,” he said. “This motivates us to invest more in the merger.”
Altman personally invested in nuclear fusion company Helion Energy, which signed a deal to supply nuclear power to Microsoft.
Crawford sees nuclear power as a “silver bullet” to a larger, longer-term problem. For Crawford, there are several ways to address this. The first is for researchers to change the way they build AI systems, in a way that consumes less energy, prioritizes sustainability, and relies on renewable energy and recycled water to reduce the impact on the planet.
Another solution is for tech giants to place as much importance on the sustainability of a generative AI model as on its capabilities or marketing.
Australia, she believes, has a crucial role to play. As a country already grappling with climate impacts, its policies could set global precedents, she said.
Crawford also highlighted last week’s Senate Select Committee report, which highlighted the need for sustainability and transparency from tech giants. One of its recommendations was that the Federal Government “take a coordinated and holistic approach to managing the growth of Australia’s AI infrastructure to ensure that growth is sustainable, delivers value to Australians and is in line with the ‘national interest’.
Kyndryl executive and former Tesla executive Faith Taylor.
Crawford envisions a future in which AI helps solve the climate crisis, rather than exacerbating it.
“What we would like to see is artificial intelligence that can help us solve the climate crisis without actually contributing to it. »
This is also the view of Faith Taylor, Head of Sustainability at Kyndryl, the world’s largest IT services provider.
She was previously responsible for global environmental social governance for Tesla, working with Elon Musk.
“I like to say that ‘sustainability is a team sport,’” Taylor said. “There is an urgent need to combat climate change, and this requires collective action…Whether you are a cloud provider or an AI developer, each party plays a role in minimizing our collective environmental impacts by operating at within a broader system that includes governments, energy suppliers and hardware manufacturers.
Taylor said AI could help accelerate the transition to renewable energy by predicting weather conditions, monitoring supply chain performance and even making itself more energy efficient over time as Companies are developing low-power AI models.
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Crawford said that after two years of “shock and awe” with the successful launch of ChatGPT and its subsequent adoption, we are now in a period of reflection on the technology.
“I think we are at a turning point,” she said. “We’ve reached a point where we can look back and say, ‘OK, what’s useful, what’s actually working for us and what’s not working for us?’