Social media and generative AI can have a big climate

On a train or bus, or just standing in line, the most common sight these days is the muted glow of a screen, and people’s blinking thumbs getting lost in the endless scrolling on their smartphones.

Worldwide, about 62% of people are active social media users. In some countries, this number is more than 90%. This adds up to a lot of usage: the average UK adult spends 3 hours and 41 minutes Online every day, which means about 56 days a year, roughly two full months.

Every time we read an article, see an ad, or view a photo or video, that content must be transferred from the social media platform’s servers to our devices. The larger the file size, the more data needs to be transferred. High-resolution photos or long videos contain a lot of data.

This data is distributed across many “server farms” (usually located in a large warehouse of thousands of computers) around the world. If you upload a video from Youtube, you won’t connect to one “Youtube data HQ” somewhere in California, but instead you’ll be collecting data from many different servers often in different countries or continents.

Transmitting data over the Internet requires power, sending signals through various electronic devices, including routers, servers, and our mobile phone or laptop. All of these devices It consumes energy To work, the servers must remain cool. This energy is often generated from fossil fuels.

Tiktok is the least environmentally friendly social media platform, according to a study of French internet users conducted by Greenspector in 2021 and beyond. Updated in 2023.

Simply scrolling through the app exchanges a lot of data as Tiktok constantly plays videos, including many pre-loaded videos in the background that you may never see.

At one end of the spectrum is LinkedIn. Being a text-based platform, with fewer images and videos, scrolling through LinkedIn uses much less data.

Generative AI is power-hungry

Of course, social media is not the only culprit. Generative AI, with its ability to create text, images, music, and even videos, is completely reshaping many creative processes. But although they are attractive, and sometimes even necessary, they come with an environmental price.

Unsurprisingly, the more powerful the AI, the more energy it consumes. Unlike when you stream a video or load a large web page, with generative AI, most of the energy is used at its end, while processing your query. If you ask ChatGPT to write a novel for you, the writing process involves a lot of calculations, even if the resulting text itself doesn’t use a lot of data.

All of this naturally raises critical questions about the sustainability of generative AI and about our carbon footprints. AI companies themselves are reluctant to tell us exactly how much energy they use, but they can’t seem to stop their chatbots from taking a stab. ChatGPT-4 asked “How much energy is used to process this query?” “0.002 to 0.02 kWh,” he wrote, which he said “would be similar to holding a 60-watt light bulb on for about two minutes.”

This almost matches the numbers you provide Independent analysis This is tens of times more power than what is required for a Google search. With millions of queries per day to ChatGPT alone, it all adds up to a significant amount of additional power usage. As generative AI continues to develop, the demand for energy will increase.

What you can do

While the environmental impact of these technologies raises real concerns, it is also necessary to acknowledge their benefits. For example, AI-powered tools like text-to-speech, voice recognition, and automatic captions have already made society more inclusive, especially for people with disabilities or neurodiverse people. I don’t want to suggest abolishing social media or rejecting generative AI altogether.

But there are things we can do to reduce the carbon footprint of our internet use, including a combination of individual actions and systemic changes. Here are some strategies we can all adopt:

First, limit screen time. This is the most obvious. Reducing the amount of time you spend on social media can directly reduce energy consumption.

Second, use power saving settings on your devices, such as lowering screen brightness, using a dark wallpaper, and enabling power saving modes.

Third, consider choosing social media that is less energy consuming, using environmental rating information to make your decision. This means more text, less video, and generative AI.

Fourth, whenever possible, use Wi-Fi over 4G or 5G mobile data: Wi-Fi generally consumes less power.

So, next time we find ourselves scrolling endless sequences of photos and videos, our faces lit by the blue glow of our screens, let’s take a moment and start implementing these simple strategies, so we can enjoy the benefits of connectivity, while minimizing the impact on our planet’s resources. Ultimately, the choice is ours.

This article was republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons license. Read Original article.