What is the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence?

The environmental footprint of artificial intelligence is like how much energy a robot uses to think and work.

Imagine you have a super-smart toy that helps you solve puzzles by thinking really fast, that's like AI. But this smart toy doesn’t run on batteries; it runs on electricity, just like your fridge or your phone charger.

Now picture this: if millions of these smart toys are working all day long in big rooms with lots of computers, they use a lot of energy, so much that it's like turning on a thousand light bulbs at once, non-stop. This uses up energy, and sometimes the electricity comes from power plants that burn coal or oil, which can make the air dirty.

This is what we mean by the environmental footprint, it’s how much our smart machines use energy and affect the planet around them.

AI needs to learn by trying many things. Think of it like learning to ride a bike: you fall down, get up again, try harder, that's how AI learns too. To do this quickly, it uses powerful computers, which need a lot of energy.

So, just like a robot using lots of batteries to think fast and solve puzzles, AI can use a lot of energy, especially when it's learning or working very hard.