Jo De Boeck notes the growing list of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications as they take up more and more of the resources on Earth to deliver anything from Amazon recommendations to deciphering a virus DNA.
In this guest blog, the EVP/CSO of imec shares his insights into how power-hungry AI can be and the need for an Energy label for AI.
Jo De Boeck is the Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer of imec, an R&D and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, based in Belgium. Photo: imec.
AI has become more intelligent in recent years.
Fuelled by seemingly infinite computational power that is easily available on tap today, it now processes huge amounts of data to recognise patterns every day.
Yet, with each new “trick” that an AI can learn, whether this is differentiating a cat from a dog or getting a robotic arm to figure out a Rubik’s Cube, billions of calculations go into each task.
“We need to talk about an Energy Label for AI,” says Jo De Boeck, EVP & CSO, imec. Photo: imec.
That takes a lot of energy to power up, adding to an already fraught situation with global warming.
Compare this to the human brain.
It can effortlessly complete many of these cognitive feats that AI is accomplishing and celebrated for today, while requiring a small fraction of the energy.
So, while AI can be useful to help save energy by optimising its use, there is energy needed to train an AI model as well. This energy is not insubstantial.
Can this inspire us to develop more energy-efficient AI systems?
Will they bring a net positive in efforts to prevent or reverse permanent environmental damage?
