My 12-year-old took on a small project this summer: writing a report on every breed of domestic cat.<\/p>\n
It was more challenging than expected (who knew there was no consensus on the actual number of breeds there are?), but after diligently completing the work, he set out to create a cover page.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d used reliable online sources for his research, but for this last bit, he relaxed and turned to ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
The chatbot did its thing, and a few seconds later, he had his image: an illustration of 10 multicoloured kitties, with the unsurprising title, All Cat Breeds.<\/p>\n
It was cute enough, but as I watched ChatGPT churn, all I could think about was: Is it worth it? Leaving aside the loss of creativity \u2014 not so long ago, my son would have designed such a cover using his own imagination and pencil crayons \u2014 what was this frivolous exercise doing to the environment?<\/p>\n
And with AI increasingly an inescapable part of our everyday lives, how much worse will things get?<\/p>\n
Generative AI requires shocking amounts of energy to run.<\/p>\n
According to an April report by the International Energy Agency, data centres accounted for\u00a01.5 per cent<\/a> of the world\u2019s energy consumption in 2024. But that consumption, driven largely by the exponential acceleration of AI use, is projected to double by 2030 to 945 terawatt hours (TWh), more electricity than the entire country of Japan uses for everything.<\/p>\n In Ontario, the\u00a0IESO<\/a> projects net annual energy demand for data centres to grow from three TWh in 2026 to 13 TWh in 2050 \u2014 423 per cent.<\/p>\n Quebec, meanwhile, appears headed for an electricity shortage by\u00a02027<\/a>. AI is so power-hungry that\u00a0Amazon<\/a>,\u00a0Google<\/a> and\u00a0Elon Musk<\/a> are all currently building or buying their own energy infrastructure to supply their ever-expanding systems.<\/p>\n Then, there\u2019s the water.<\/p>\n Data centres need a lot of water for their cooling systems and to control humidity. And, unlike the water used for, say, bathing or cleaning, that liquid is not returned to the sewage system after use \u2014 it just evaporates.<\/p>\n The IEA estimates that data centres consume a jaw-dropping\u00a0560 billion litres of water<\/a> a year, and the number is expected to rise to 1,200 billion litres by 2030. Making matters worse, more and more data centres are being built in areas where\u00a0water is scarce<\/a>.<\/p>\n With AI use exploding \u2014 ChatGPT already has a\u00a0billion users<\/a> \u2014 the environmental impact is expected to exact an even bigger toll.<\/p>\n But Gen AI is also in its relative infancy. Optimization, ideally, will follow innovation.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think, over time, out of necessity, a lot of this is going to get more energy efficient,\u201d says Kathleen Kauth, the chief operating officer at\u00a0Mantle Developments<\/a>, which advises the real estate sector on climate strategy. \u201cNobody wants to create a huge emissions problem or a power scarcity problem. That\u2019s nobody\u2019s goal.\u201d<\/p>\n But a goal of several Canadian AI companies is to make those emissions and that power scarcity less of a problem. They\u2019re developing ways to make AI leaner, faster and greener.<\/p>\n If this is in the industry\u2019s self-interest \u2014 energy use is the main limiting factor to AI growth \u2014 it\u2019s also in the planet\u2019s.<\/p>\n Small is beautiful<\/p>\n Simply put, Gen AI consumes energy in two main ways. One, large language models \u2014 the engines of chatbots like ChatGPT \u2014 need to be trained on enormous sets of data, which require equally enormous amounts of electricity.<\/p>\n Two, every time a user asks a chatbot a question or requests that it produce text, code or sounds, the chatbot needs yet more electricity to process that request.<\/p>\n But what if those LLMs were smaller?\u00a0<\/p>\n Multiverse Computing<\/a>, which has offices in Toronto, U.K. and several European cities, has developed a quantum-inspired technique to dramatically compress models so that they perform their computations more efficiently and, thus, require less energy.<\/p>\n The result, says CTO Samuel Mugel, are models that perform just as well as the original (sometimes even better) but need only half as much energy \u2014 a significant savings at the data centre level.<\/p>\n \u201cThe environmental impact of AI is potentially way beyond energy consumption,\u201d Mugel says, pointing out that AI\u2019s massive energy needs have meant a revival of dirty sources like coal. (U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order<\/a> in April to this effect.) \u201cBut a big part of our value proposition is: Let\u2019s push the needle on what we\u2019re able to do with current resources.\u201d<\/p>\n The company has just released its smallest models to date, which it\u2019s named SuperFly and ChickenBrain because they\u2019re so tiny they could, theoretically, run on hardware smaller than a fly or chicken\u2019s brain. The former\u2019s small enough that it can run locally on automobiles, appliances and smartphones without cellular connectivity.<\/p>\n Do you want to go faster?<\/p>\n From smartphones to data centres, semiconductor chips make the digital world run.<\/p>\n But semiconductor design has changed little since the technology was pioneered in the late 1940s. As\u00a0Blumind<\/a> CEO, Niraj Mathur, points out, it\u2019s insufficient for the insatiable computational demands of modern AI.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was never designed to run neural networks,\u201d he says, referring to the brain-inspired architecture that underpins the technology.<\/p>\n What Blumind is currently developing is an analogue chip specifically for that purpose.<\/p>\n In a digital chip, memory and processing are separate units and data must travel between the two, which increases latency (basically, the time it takes for AI to \u201cthink\u201d and respond to an input). Blumind\u2019s chips, in contrast, directly process signals and perform computations within the memory itself, rather than converting them to binary code.<\/p>\n The result, Mathur says, are chips that, depending on workload and application, could use 100 to 1,000 times less energy than digital chips. This makes it possible to run extremely small neural networks directly on devices like smart glasses<\/a> where the size of batteries is inherently limited.<\/p>\n Blumind is focused on this edge computing market for the moment, but Mathur sees a day where similar technology could be deployed on a much larger scale.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the innovation that\u2019s happening on the devices, on the edge, will soon translate into efficiencies at the data centre as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Making it do twice the work<\/p>\n Cooling systems can consume up to 40 per cen<\/a>t of a data centre\u2019s energy, with much of that energy used to dispel heat out of the centre and into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n It\u2019s effectively a double-whammy of emissions. But rather than letting that hot air just escape \u2014 the last thing the atmosphere needs \u2014 you could theoretically harness its energy.<\/p>\n This is what the startup, Qscale<\/a>, plans for the 142-megawatt data centre it\u2019s building in L\u00e9vis, Que. Partnering with Les Fraises de l\u2019\u00eele d\u2019Orl\u00e9ans (FIOINC), a local fruit company, Qscale will use its waste heat to warm several greenhouses<\/a> a kilometre away. They\u2019re also giving the heat away for free, using a district heating network \u2014 a closed-loop system that captures and transports the heat \u2014 built with FIOINC\u2019s help.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to monetize it,\u201d says Qscale CEO Martin Bouchard. \u201cFor us, it\u2019s giving back to society. To the people that are basically accepting that data centres are using the energy in their communities.\u201d<\/p>\n While the system adds about five to 10 per cent to the cost of the data centre, the benefits, for Bouchard, are worth it.<\/p>\n Not only does it enable companies like FIOINC to grow things like blackberries, whose importation creates its own share of GHG emissions, it also helps offset some of the environmental costs associated with AI.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s basically like you\u2019re using each electron two times,\u201d says Bouchard.<\/p>\n Mantle\u2019s Kathleen Kauth is cautiously optimistic that such moves will help us responsibly adopt AI, and limit the negative impacts on power and emissions.<\/p>\n \u201cThe digital infrastructure industry takes it on the chin sometimes, and rightfully so in many ways,\u201d she says. \u201cBut we work across all the real estate segments \u2014 industrial, commercial, residential \u2014 and far and away, digital infrastructure is the most institutionally committed to improving climate outcomes in their operations. And I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My 12-year-old took on a small project this summer: writing a report on every breed of domestic cat.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-121615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}