Generating Bitcoin consumes 145 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, more than the Netherlands uses.
If Google were to integrate generative artificial intelligence into every search, electricity consumption would rise to around 29 billion kilowatt hours per year, an amount higher than that consumed by many countries including Kenya, Guatemala and Croatia.
These are the estimates from the Digiconomist website reported in the New Yorker article entitled 'The obscene energy demands of AI' which asks a current question: "How can the world reach the zero emissions goal if it continues to invent new ways of consuming energy ?'.
The topic is increasingly urgent and Digiconomist data overlap with the many estimates of recent months.
According to a document from the University of Washington, for example, hundreds of millions of queries on ChatGpt can cost around 1 gigawatt hour per day, equivalent to the energy consumption of 33 thousand US families.
While according to a UN study, in the two-year period 2020-2022 generating Bitcoin consumed 173.42 Terawatt hours of electricity (Italy consumes 295), if it were a nation it would be the 27th in the world.
"The development of digital technologies has allowed the improvement of many processes, reducing overall energy consumption and environmental impact. But the production of some fundamental systems for the development of some technologies leaves open questions from the environmental impact point of view ", Nicola Gatti, Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Polytechnic of Milan and Head of the Artificial Intelligence Observatory, explains to ANSA. Regarding AI, he adds: "One of the many challenges that the scientific community must face is making these models more specific and consequently smaller: this could allow the reduction of the environmental impact of these instruments."
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