Tech tug-of-war

You’ve probably notice a spike of interest around A.I., ChatGPT and the rest of it.

As someone who finds it all truly awesome, but not quite rushing to embrace it just yet, I’ve seen an interesting tug-of-war going on between A.I. and its climate impact.

On one hand, as is the case with other recent groundbreaking tech like crypto, A.I. has a significant carbon footprint. In one report, researchers found training for large A.I. models can create emissions equivalent of up to 5 cars, and that includes the manufacture of the cars.

On the flipside, tech that measures a company’s emissions is looking to A.I. to help with some of the more complex measurements, such as Scope 3 emissions.

I have no stand either way on this today – I wouldn’t talk someone out of embracing A.I. because of its climate impact, nor would I talk someone into it because of its (yet to be proven) measuring abilities.

I think it’s just too early, and while A.I. is not new by a long shot, everyone’s still tinkering with the settings while this hard stuff is being figured out.

In the meantime, I’m sitting back on this one and watching how it plays out.