UK Allocates £1.73M to AI Projects Driving Towards Net Zero Goals
In the constant evolution of AI and the chips that run it, there is one element that often gets overlooked: these things consume power and water like neither are finite nor threatened.
UK Allocates £1.73M to AI Projects Driving Towards Net Zero Goals: To meet its 2050 net zero goals, the UK government is investing $1.73 million ($2.2 million) in a series of AI projects.
A total of eight projects at universities and private companies will be funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. These projects focus on three themes: generation, demand, transmission and distribution of electricity; transport decarbonization; and land use for renewable energy.
UK Allocates £1.73M to AI Projects Driving Towards Net Zero Goals
“AI is the defining technology of our generation and the UK is harnessing its enormous potential to … tackle shared global challenges, particularly climate change,” said minister for AI Viscount Camrose Jonathan Berry. “This funding backs brilliant British innovation to drive forward new AI solutions which will help us reach our net zero ambitions.”
Among the particulars of the funding are an artificial intelligence project to improve weather forecasting, which is in turn designed to help manage renewable energy; using artificial intelligence to identify projects eligible for green finance funding; analyzing traffic and charging electric fleets to reduce transport emissions; and using artificial intelligence to suggest low-carbon technologies for construction projects.
In the constant evolution of AI and the chips that run it, there is one element that often gets overlooked: these things consume power and water like neither are finite nor threatened.
The energy required to create one AI image, for example, is the same as what it takes to charge a smartphone, and that is not even counting what it takes to train it. Using GPT-3 to train, for example, would emit the carbon equivalent of driving a car to the Moon and back – a round trip of around 480,000 miles.
Regardless of training, researchers estimate that AI could use as much energy as an entire country just to process queries. Researchers estimated that, if Google’s search results were entirely LLM-generated, the global energy footprint would equal that of Ireland.
The UK may be making more progress than some nations, but it is also not on track to meet its net-zero emissions goals, as the National Audit Office stated last year that low-carbon investments must double in order to avoid falling further behind. Almost all US cities planning net-zero transitions are likely to fail to meet their targets as well, despite the fact that they are making more progress than others.
There is some debate about whether more AI will solve the problem, but at least one US think tank argues that it will. Of course, that think tank is backed by companies like Microsoft, Google, and others taking big bets on AI, so your mileage may vary.
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