AI School › Ethics and the future · Lesson 28 of 130

🌱 AI and the planet: how much energy does it use?

Behind every answer there are huge computers using energy and water.

AI seems to live in your phone, yet it actually lives in huge buildings full of computers, called data centers, working day and night. Training a large AI uses as much electricity as thousands of homes for weeks, and the computers get so hot that rivers of water are needed to cool them.

Companies are responding: solar and wind energy, more efficient computers, smaller models for simple tasks. And AI users can do their part with a single habit: use it when it truly helps. Ten well-made questions beat a hundred random ones, the same rule as water and electricity: resources are respected by using them intelligently. That too, after all, is intelligence.

🎒 Try it in class (or at home)

Green maths: research together how much energy one chatbot question uses compared to a web search and a lightbulb on for an hour. Then write your class's 3 "good AI habits".

← Lesson 27: AI and work: jobs that change · Lesson 29: The world's rules: AI laws →

📱 Download the Android app (beta) iOS coming soon

Say what you mean. Get what you need.

Grace Certified, the AI coach that trains and certifies your prompt engineering, by Agora Intelligence.