UNESCO Report Warns of AI’s Soaring Energy Use, Offers 90% Reduction Blueprint

A new UNESCO report finds that small tweaks to AI models could cut energy use by 90%. The findings call for smarter, smaller, and more sustainable AI development.

The global appetite for generative AI is skyrocketing, but so is its energy consumption.

A new report jointly released by UNESCO and University College London (UCL) warns that the energy demands of artificial intelligence, especially large language models (LLMs), have reached unsustainable levels.

The research estimates that just one prompt to a generative AI model uses around 0.34 watt-hours. When multiplied by the daily usage of over 1 billion people, the global energy demand balloons to 310 gigawatt-hours annually — roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity consumed by over 3 million people in a low-income country.

“Generative AI’s annual energy footprint is already equivalent to that of a low-income country, and it is growing exponentially,” said Tawfik ...