ChatGPT: What is the carbon footprint of generative AI models?

The more powerful the AI, the more energy it uses. So, what does the emergence of increasingly more powerful generative AI models mean for the future of our carbon footprint?

“Generative” refers to the ability of an AI algorithm to produce complex data. The alternative is “discriminative” AI, which chooses between a fixed number of options and produces just a single number. 

Generative AI can create much more complex outputs, such as a sentence, a paragraph, an…