> If you're an AI hater, it's frustrating to see what you consider a useless technology growing to take up more and more of our energy mix, eating into climate gains being made from the immense growth of renewable energy. If you're an AI maximalist, on the other hand, the significant energy use projected for AI is a small price to pay for a technology that you think will revolutionize our lives much more than technologies like air conditioning, refrigeration, or the automobile ever did.
> The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. In the long run, AI's energy use will likely level off at a significant but not grid-melting level that's roughly commensurate with the collective economic value we as a society get from it. Whether the trade-offs inherent in that shift are "worth it" involves a lot of value judgements that go well beyond how much electricity a bunch of servers are using.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/06/is-generative-ai-really-g...