Is the future sustainable?

AI and robots will do our work, we'll get paid in cryptocurrency and cars will drive themselves - but each of these technologies is a massive energy hog. Nicole Kobie reveals the environmental costs of future tech

Driverless cars, AI, robots and other technologies that are starting to impact our lives are already having climate consequences. Training a single large language model creates the same carbon emissions of five cars over their lifetime, according to one study (pcpro.link/346cars). And it's not just energy use: the shift to robotics and automated cars is driving demand for rare-earth metals, while efficiencies in manufacturing can spark an increase in consumption - bad news for pollution, landfills and emissions.

And we're just at the beginning of the Al boom, if Big Tech is to be believed.

On the other hand, some of these technologies can slash emissions and other pollution. By sharing driverless cars, fewer vehicles need to be made; Al can analyse and optimise energy use, perhaps even helping to develop new materials for better batteries; and robotics can be more efficient in manufacturing than humans, slashing waste. There are also some immediate mitigations: renewable energy sources combined with data centre optimisation reduces the fossil fuel burden, as does building efficiency into systems via coding decisions or hardware design.

Currently, data centres and data transmission networks are responsible for 0.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions (pcpro.link/346data), according to the International Energy Agency, though some put it closer to 2%, similar to air travel emissions. The myth that a Google search was on a par with boiling a kettle has been debunked (pcpro.link/346tea), though beefing up search with AI will unquestionably boost its carbon footprint; we just don't know by how much, until that data is available. And right now, it isn't.

Artificial intelligence