We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/?utm_medium=tr_social&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagement
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AI is the hottest technology of our time. Still, so much about it, including its energy use and the resulting potential climate impact, remains unknown. Leading AI companies keep exact figures about the technology’s energy consumption closely guarded. But we did the math to figure it out.
For the past six months, MIT Technology Review’s team of reporters and editors have worked to uncover the extent of AI’s energy footprint, how much it’s set to grow in the coming years, where that energy will come from, and who will pay for it.
The result is the most comprehensive look yet at AI’s energy use, revealing the growing complexity of our shared future.
Tallies of AI’s energy use often short-circuit the conversation—either by scolding individual behavior, or by triggering comparisons to bigger climate offenders. Both reactions dodge the point: AI is unavoidable, and even if a single query is low-impact, governments and companies are now shaping a much larger energy future around AI’s needs. This story is meant to inform the many decisions still ahead: where data centers go, what powers them, and how to make the growing toll of AI visible and accountable.
This may or may not be a good article. It’s behind a paywall, so I would have to pay $12 to read it. This was posted by the publication who wrote it (at least they didn’t try to hide it,) but I feel like I’ve been catfished.
I understand the figure says “led to”, but is there any actual number ascribed to how much AI was responsible for the change in energy use?
> In 2017, AI began to change everything. Data centers started getting built with energy-intensive hardware designed for AI, which led them to double their electricity consumption by 2023.
Just my uneducated opinion… But with the amount of power usage predicted does AI need this much power to improve its ability, or will a good chunk of it be used for surveillance/ manipulation of people.
Kinda like the massive NSA servers. Could we be looking at a future where every person is monitored and even has a dedicated AI being used to influence and control that person?
A bit far fetched but the scale of some of the proposed AI infrastructure seems larger than just research.
Businesses would find it useful for targeted marketing, but the government could uterlise it for total control “big brother” style……