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Nvidia’s Next Victim — The Environment
Some of their chips are consuming more energy than Georgia or Costa Rica per year.
The narrative is easy on this one:
- AI is cool
- People start using it
- Corporates start selling it
- Corporates need AI fuel
- Corporates need Nvidia chips
- Nvidia chips need energy
- Power consumption increases
It all started when you told your friend, “Have you heard of ChatGPT? Look, it’s so cool.”
I don’t blame you — Everyone did the same thing. This also wouldn’t be that much of a problem if it had happened a long time ago. But our current days are not Earth’s most favorite.
2023 Was Warm (Actually, The Warmest)
But it’s not just 2023. It’s also 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015. It’s getting warm around here and if you’re looking for someone to blame, CO2 emissions could take the hit.
You see, behind the amazing tech world that we all have nowadays, are data centers operating 24/7 and consuming a tremendous amount of power and energy. If data centers are built in an environmentally sustainable fashion, sure, you can keep swiping through Instagram.
But most techies need to grow fast. The only way to do that is to follow methods that are easy. Sustainable data centers wouldn’t be categorized as “easy.”
Hence, you’re left with huge power consumption due to the market demand for AI.
- Wall Street is investing in Nvidia and AMD.
- Elon is buying thousands of AI chips. (But don’t worry, Tesla saved the world around 20 million metric tonnes of Co2e in 2023. So it’s okay for him to do so.)
- Those chips will mostly make it even warmer.
But the real problem is not our current state. It’s the math.
