Google AI uses enough electricity in one second to charge seven electric cars

Google AI uses enough energy in just one second to charge seven electric cars – as the tech giant reveals its 2023 carbon emissions were almost 50 percent higher than in 2019. 

In its latest environmental report, Google said its greenhouse gas emissions last year were 48 percent higher than in 2019. 

It said the increase was due to increasing amounts of energy needed by its data centers – a figure driven by the surge in Artificial Intelligence. 

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Google AI searches use more power than its regular searches

Google’s AI services, such as AI Overviews and this cool AI-powered robot, need more juice than a regular search. 

A recent study claimed generative AI systems, such as CgatGPT, can use as much as 33 percent more energy than a computer running task-specific software. 

In the case of Google’s AI-generated searches, this soon clocks up to a whole lot of juice. 

In any average second, Google is asked to perform an average of 98,379 searches per second. If all of these were AI-generated searches, that would equate to around 295.14 kilowatt-hours, according to Gizmodo. 

This is the same amount of power you’d need to charge around seven-and-a-half average electric cars. 

Google has is hoping to become net zero emissions by 2030, but with the release of its latest report admitted that it may be ‘challenging’. 

“As we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute, and the emissions associated with the expected increases in our technical infrastructure investment,” the company said in its report. 

Overall Google says around two-thirds of its energy comes from carbon-free sources. 

Bill Gates believes artificial intelligence will help combat the climate crisis

However, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said earlier this month that AI will actually help to tackle the climate crisis. 

He claimed that using AI would result in a two—to six percent rise in energy usage worldwide but that AI could provide the solution. 

“The question is, will AI accelerate a more than six percent reduction? And the answer is: certainly,” he said.

Gates said big tech companies would be happy to pay a ‘green premium’ for ‘clean’ energy. 

“The tech companies are the people willing to pay a premium and to help bootstrap green energy capacity,” he added.

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