i revolutionary selves. so the leader who fought in a brutal 21 years civil war and switch on to become so dense, 1st vice president a news release, global knowledge to which we would identify what happens next is still a mystery. which is the real world, tells the story of john graham and mysterious death on the audio. visual intelligence is driving a technological revolution about feeding. it requires much more like tricity to have on file more powerful computers. and yet more giants also senses. so how can such new demand be met? what all the implications this is inside story, the

hello welcome to the show. i'm sammy's a than on the visual intelligence is the biggest revolution in technology. since the internet arrives more than 3 decades ago. now for some, it conjures up images of, of science fiction future with computers taking over from humans. but there's a more immediate issue, see the huge amount of energy needed to fuel this revolutionary new technology. the international energy agency estimates within 2 years a i and it's related technologies will consume nearly as much energy as the entire annual electricity needs of japan powerful computers performing millions of functions, the 2nd need more electricity to drive and cool them. and also sensors where the house, lot of countries come meet the energy demands of a computer as well. then the people lose allison. anyway,

we'll put that to our guest shortly. but 1st, let's look at how and why i have requires so much energy will gone to centers are often referred to as home of the internet. these facilities are way computing talent and vast amounts of jobs are all stored in process. they support a wide range of applications, including all the visual intelligence. well, the keep a life facilities running, they need to be constantly cool down. this requires more energy than any other type of doctor's center. for instance, a model slide chat, g p t require 10 times more electricity than this done the google search. and the single adults assigned to use it as much power as $80000.00 homes in the us. it's this rapid increase in energy consumption that has many people worried, critic site threatens to worse and climate change in the roadside just made by

major tech companies. microsoft, for example, increased it's greenhouse emissions by 30 percent last year launch the do so it's, i'm vicious, a i, pursuits, but the very organizations consuming all this energy claim. they're also working on the solution. in video, the chip giant recently rolled out a new line of graphics processing unit. as a result of the use is $25.00 times less energy than previous models. but it's advocates arguing that a i will be crucial towards combating climate change the, the well, that's bringing, i guess. now we have joining us from dublin adrian white lot a technology editor for the irish independence. he focuses on advancements in technology industry. in manila, vince parrot is as being a pioneer and renewable energy in asia and a former philippine energy,

minnesota. and in montreal, sasha luciano, an artificial intelligence research and the climate lead that hugging face a global style top and responsible open source, a. i a warm welcome to all of you. if i could start with adrian. first of all, i do because this is, let's say it's not the most familiar topic to most people. explain to us just how integral, how important and vital dots a sense is all. now basic, i don't know cool functions of life that we might not realize. yeah, when an email leaves your computer or a text leaves your phone or you send someone a photo or you try to watch something on netflix or amazon or any of those normal day to day activities, all of that activity has to go through a data center from your phone, your computer to a data center, then we lose it somewhere else. so they are absolutely entitled to almost everything we do online. all arrive and vince adding to that

picture is now explained to us how the combination of those 2. now when we add a i to our daily functions of life, we add it to these dots of sensors. the sensor is, adrian says, of everything we do. how does that by cop energy consumption? well, the additional server that we have in our office consumes about 7 kilowatt. but underneath i server, which uses a lot of computing power, consumers about $30.00 to $100.00 kilowatt. so it's a multiple of 15 times energy consumption for an a i server versus a traditional server that you have in your office or even um, in your shared office. so the is basically the golf holding off energy. it is a huge consumer of power. it says incredible and it's

almost equal now to the consumption. you mentioned japan and, but it's also produced as we'll talk about it in a while. carbon footprint that's almost equal to the carbon emission of a country like brazil. so we got to talk about once a mile a i and data centers, some of the climate change. that's a lot and it has just to add since fences. very kindly giving us some shocking stats to get us rolling. sasha, here's another one i came across ireland in island dock to centers account for 18 percent of the energy consumption. the why is a eyes such an energy gambling monster as well? actually training and deploying a lot of models, especially these new generations of large language models like chat g p t actually uses a huge amounts of energy a lot more than previous generations of models that were a lot smaller. and so essentially,

for each web search with dinner today are for each chat about you talk to, you have this big model that's using a lot of energy to give you all this data, all these answers and actually, um, since its growth is so fast, renewable energy how it hasn't really caught up, and so a lot of this energy is coming from coal is coming from natural gas. and so it brings with it huge emissions as was mentioned. and so essentially, because in this right raise to put into everything, we're also pumping more energy then we can produce renewable. and so is it decisive? basically, it sounds like because a guy is doing operation more operations and doing them quicker. and for that, it needs a bigger input of energy. well, especially like generative models like like for example, mid journey when you, when you generate an image, right? it's actually creating things from scratch as opposed to finding existing images on the internet or finding existing text on the internet. and so, you know, if you think about it, that takes a lot of compute that salt takes a lot of computational effort. and that comes with

a huge energy footprint. alright, adrian, you mentioned that is that the send to dots, a sense is that the center, no pun intended, of on lives and everything we're doing well given want, sasha just explained that is the mon frontage. it going to outpace or it's already outpacing energy generation. i mean, it takes was a couple of years to build some kind of a dot to send to, but over 4 years to build a power generating installation. right? yeah, i mean with a very interesting situation here in arlington, dublin, where i am sitting, where as you pointed data center consumption of energy has now quadrupled in the last 9 years. so the latest statistics show the data centers here in ireland for amazon and mehta and google and all of the tech joins now consume more energy. then all of the urban the households put together. that's the 1st time that that's actually happened. so where is this new energy coming from?

well, you know, ireland just to stick with the example. we've had to radically increase the amount of renewable energy winds. for example, there are some days in ireland where wind energy from wind turbines actually amounts to the majority of all electricity crazy in the country and for the 1st 6 months of the year, i think it was about a 3rd of the energy. so the army here is that while these data centers and these a, i infused data centers are pushing the need for energy in countries like garland, they're actually forcing us to go more to renewable energy. so there may be a silver lining there, or that might be all to, to bring sasha back into the discussion because that's one of the things i think you're looking at right. when you take into account this rapid growth, it's going on. not only with the dots, a sentence, but also we should mention the the gadgets associated with

a i a smartphone, smart tvs, pcs, all of that stuff. is there a way to stump awesome. folding off the edge of the and a g cliff, i can call it that. i think that being a lot, we need a lot more transparency about how much energy is being use, how many natural resources are being used currently we have a bit of a gap in terms of what we know and it's really frustrating because the whole class you know, yeah, well, who is, who is the, is it corporations keeping listed of themselves? so essentially the way the reporting currently works is these end of year reports like we saw microsoft in google and then essentially they're saying, oh, things are getting out of hand. we are using too much energy. we're not meeting our climate targets, but we don't know where that's coming from. we don't know exactly what is contributing to this. of course. there's the usage of a i and in web search, for example, or in, in smartphones or in, you know, all the smart devices. but we really need to know what the different contributions are and how we can reduce them. so i think that the average user,

if they knew how many grams of carbon or kilowatt hours of energy was used for each . yeah, web search should, they would maybe think twice before using type g p as a calculator, which is apparently stuff we've had. people do so putting the, putting more transfer may more clean, the companies are not telling us that show, we know how much c, o 2 energy is being used, or produced or consumed, right? you know, they're not, and essentially it's hard to get those exact numbers because it's, these data centers are distributed. so every time you do a google search or every time you create a charge of the day, it's probably a different server somewhere. and it's actually hard to meaningfully trace where that, where the call is happening, where the energy is coming from and it requires effort on their part. and so, you know, when companies don't have the incentives, they don't necessarily put in that effort. this is quite scary stuff and so i know you used to handle a policy when you were a minister all some parts of the world heading towards maybe an energy crisis and they don't even know because we don't have level 5. so sasha said, well, so for

a country like singapore, which so obviously in, for it's a lot of its power from overseas or from energy. they will actually start to, to do a moratorium on and, and use data centers in the country. they're really trying to manage their carbon footprint as part of their commitment to the power assignments ready. and for about a year they've stop allowing licenses for any new data centers. they've just recently opened a they even have almost like an option for new data centers provide those data centers consume, or a plastic consume renewable energy or some sort of more efficient power consuming data set the technology so waiting for a country like single board that could be replicated in other countries that more and more a government honestly what would be nice to

a truck infrastructure investments in biggest ethics but also. ready it displaces typical of energy consumption for the household or the ordinary household. good show, right. so it's a good point. ready? starting to put a break of and funny enough countries, investors in data centers in this part of the world, i'd say ok, single for you're not allow me more data centers. we're going to go across the river in militia. that's where they're all rushing to setup data. centers thing so interesting that guy has going on right now in terms of the odyssey of related to that adrian a, some countries having to prioritize access to energy between different sectors. and since you are an island his and noticed that i came up with delta centers in island, a raising up so much energy, the country on the one hand had to try and stick to its environmental goals. then by calling last year, they announce they're going to call 65000 cows over 3 years. was that to

free up some energy and c, o 2 allowance for the dots to senses is that's what's happening. the cause of taking a bullet for this one. so the 2 things are tangentially very time gently connected . so we're not going as i'm calling 65000 cars to make their energy for data centers, but they are not to release it because ireland, like all the countries we've mentioned have carbon footprint targets. and we have to reduce our carbon footprint. so if we want to keep watching netflix, if we want our jace bt, if we want our social media i, let's be clear. and let's be honest. most of us do. this is a one way street. we're not going back to the days as no social media, no netflix, we're not going to stop developing a life. so we are going to have to find other ways to try and mitigate our carbon footprint. actually, harland is not a bad example in the last 10 years, the country has actually reduced its carbon footprint overall. at the same time,

us quadrupling the number of data centers. so i talk of amara tori am on data centers are limited and we have that discussion here as well or not. and it's, it's, we have it in europe and in other countries that is a very limited discussion. you could have because there is no going back. data centers are absolutely crucial for the organ and really things that we are all doing. now. we're all on assume like we can do that with other data center. you. you opened a good point that we're not going back. so i guess the question is, how do we go forward and i'm all sustainable manner, and i want to bring session in a moment. but before we do that, let's write home this point and vince, i have a feeling there is, is it fair to say that policy makers of kind of drop the ball little bit? i mean, it's a, we don't know, they don't always know how much energy is being consumed by some of these giants.

and also looking at the map and the distribution of some of these data centers was the, a little bit of lack of oversight. and in concentrating them in some areas, putting a huge strain on some power grids of red ones. does it say about 15 states in the us have 80 percent of doctors centers of the country in them that com be an easy load on your power grid? that's true, some of us, you could imagine every data center has to connect to the grid and you can't just put it in a, in a pasture far from any uh, what, because its substation. and so what you're seeing now interestingly, is a lot of brush of sorts where data center developers are buying land, not banking them. so provided they're near a transmission connection. right now there's a lot of rush inversion and believe it or not, because there's some available uh,

trust patient access in certain parts outside of virginia. and you see the, the outside tokyo, for instance. and so everyone's trying to set up a data center near a sub station near 3. and so there's, there's conservation, they're not spread out. and in that sense, it's bringing the costs of the data center is higher because prices are near the, just near a substation. it's also going no 2nd because of the power consumption. they huge power consumption of the data center locators of data centers and looking for countries where they're relatively colder, where it's not a spots like here right now. and so being so you see a lot of data centers in scandinavia, ireland is a good example. that's main honest rarely on others and some parts of canada. so there's also a behavioral impact where countries are relatively cooler. assignments are

attracted locations for data centers because it kind of shows, you know, they cool down the data centers naturally that in a more tropical or desperate type environment. so right, sasha, what's the solution going forward? i know you've been looking at different models is the solution more a i technology that's a accelerates is 3 d chips, chip cooling technology. is this a i can solve the problem of ion. so that's, so one way of seeing it, i think that is definitely part of the solution, but it's not the whole solution. and notably, for example, for manufacturing chips, they are, for example, getting more powerful, they're getting more efficient, but we don't know how much energy is being used to create them. so to manufacture these chips, so that's also a big, big brand. so lack of any power when you do exactly. yeah. so creating manufacturing these g p, use these,

these high performance computing chips actually use a vast amounts of energy, vast amounts of water to purify the different layers of the silica and so it's really a that process as well. we need to understand what the costs and the benefits are, and that's essentially what i advocate for. we shouldn't stop doing a i, we shouldn't stop manufacturing trips, but we need to make sure that all the efforts that we're putting in all the costs, all the natural resources in the energy really makes it worse the that those efforts and that deployment. and so a project that i'm working on now in terms of a i model, is this the, to develop a energy star ratings like efficiency ratings for different kinds of a on model. so that when people are choosing a model or using a model or trying to legislate a model, they know how much energy it uses and they can make informed choices. adrian, from the research you've done, does it look like we can count on running? gone to centers on green energy, wind, solar gradually it goes, yeah. if you look at both of those energy sources, wind and solar, they have,

there's an exponential rise in the curve of adoption of those technologies. some say there's almost too much solar at the moment to keep up with demand for that source. so there is certainly help us by adrian, because what we often hear is that we haven't got enough solar wind in some countries of the to run even 100 percent of your household needs. how can we have to absolute doctors census? so that is correct and that's because of disparity of what those particular things need. reliability is very important thing here. and we talk about the supply of energy with a wind turbine. when the wind doesn't blow, you need to, you know, resort back to traditional energy sources. fossil fuels, maybe nuclear, if you have it. but a lot of countries don't nuclear with solar. it's when the sun shines in countries like island, the sun doesn't shine very much. so you need a diversity of energy sources. they're both. i think the, you know,

the overarching point is, and when you've got companies like samsung and apple and these are all developing, hey, i services, you can now listen to somebody on your phone on your new samsung phone. speak a different language to you and understand them and they can understand you all of the kind of a i functionality that's coming to our normal everyday life is going to come through data centers. we're going to need the energy and we're just going to have to do with one place. they do have a lot more sunshine to 9 and i think is fair to say philippines. so from the perspective of the global south, vince, what, you know, a lot of concerns struggling ways development needs. and is this, you know how we're going to meet the challenge between getting the energy you need now to enter into this new era when you're a country in the global south and also trying to keep on top of your environment goals. so it's a loose lemme that's right. you know,

what's interesting is what we call the hyper scanner. it's the microsoft, the amazon is, or are they bob up when they have to build or their own data center, or even ran it the data center for somebody else. they're now requiring that data center. it uses renewable energy, as the agent alludes to wind. and so far and in some parts of this region, even geothermal energy is being talked like in bases like in the philippines. that means in a shop too late. but us mention as well. wind and sold our lot because in term event, you're not running 24 hours a day. why the data center has to run like a refrigerator, like a cold storage. 24 hour by 7. so it's usually the cause of blending off of clean and not so clean energy to feel with the data center. and more and more, this type of skaters were driving really the broke in

a i are demanding. the other data center starts putting in more efficient power, less power consuming data center. so there's a big push in technology. there's something innovations going off the that that leaves a lot of investment needs a lot of cash, right. and i'm wondering for a country in the global south, are you worried about us heading towards a 3 tier world way? you'll have some countries. the energy produces a, a doing good. the wealthy countries which have already develop maybe can manage. but what about the cash strapped the development developing countries which don't have that investment in a technology? and as you said, it was, they have is the intermittent sources. yeah, so some of what's happening is those use infrastructure funds. there's several dozen um the data center funds that have no wrong the the names i just

combinations of st cloud or digital edge or anything that has the word cloud in it . they're investing billions of dollars. a lot of them are in countries that are very um, internet savvy korea's one of them. japan single for or even a large populations like indonesia where the philippines, but definitely india and china. and there are huge pressure on building infrastructure r. yes, that is true. and, but that's usually being driven by large scale investments. i, i am a chairman of a renewable power company. we cannot keep up with the demand in the data centers calling like companies saying we need power tomorrow. we can, if they 7 months, the build a wind farm or us, all right, form. so, i mean, the have to start using foss, it will be able to meet briefly, adrian, all,

we're heading towards a why the gap between the haves and have not countries? is that the reality? yes. so that's the story of this century. and as it was the last century, as the point has been fairly eloquently made, you are going to have countries which produce their own energy at the moment on mass. they are fine for energy by and large, middle east, russia, us north america, one or 2 other areas you've been going to have a whole lot of wealthy industrialized countries in europe for example, parts of age which are going to be able to afford to buy energy almost at whatever cost and develop some of their own renewables. and then you're going to have the global side, which is going to have to try and figure it out and pick up the pieces sasha, what does this mean then for the green transition and all of the environment goals, is it being on the mind via i am we're just not aware of it or talking about it.

i think this is a broader representation of the digital divide that we've been seeing in a lot of areas of tech and you know, a needs a lot of expensive guides. it's expensive data centers and the gap is growing and all of these promises that we made, or these net 0 places that we made when it comes to your investing and, and, and, and keeping up and, and making products. all the climate buttons tend to get overlooked in favor of the latest and greatest in a i. and so it's actually really hard to make those trade offs because of course, every business nowadays wants to have a chat bought or some fancy generate to the i tool and what impact that has on there. and that 0 and bushes. ambitions actually goes on unannounced and and unnoticed. fins. the bottom line here is the basic starting point for setting up a better infrastructure for these don't the systems that policy may cuz need to provide the basic information without information. how did you, for example,

when you were a minister, how on us could you calculate where you're heading? how could you plan for your energy needs? yeah, so it's a balance of between, you know, reducing the impact of the carbon footprint of fossil fuel, but introducing renewable power. but you also have the other side, which is you also want to bring in the young population into the digital world. so when we were doing the electrification of this on the villages, i love to see that there are no online way to solve the light of fit a computer where they're learning and using the cloud. so in a way, i like the, the fact that there's a big digitalization of the global south now uh through uh, remote learning. but then it 1st doctor has to follow. and that's

a concept balance between digital learning, renewable energy and infrastructure spending. always about miles as a policy maker will end on that. no, we'd like a balance thing to to, i guess for making this such a great show. adrian white glove, vince perez and sasha, which county and thank you to for watching. you can see the show again, any time by visiting our website. i'll do 0 dot com for further discussion head over to a facebook page. that's facebook dot com forward slash a j inside story. you can also join the conversation on x l a handle. there is that a inside story from a sam is a down and the whole team here for now is to find the so long to there's no place like home except when home

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