Climate Impact Of AI: Difference between revisions

 
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AI and machine learning has a climate impact from the energy used at all stages from development to deployment, as well as considerations around embodied energy in hardware from GPUs to data centres. The majority of emissions come from CO2 released from electricity generation powering AI processes. The carbon intensity of any particular project is highly dependent on its location and the electricity mix that it consumes.
 
Efforts to quantify the CO2 impact of ML have been undertaken<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Lacoste|first=Alexandre|last2=Luccioni|first2=Alexandra|last3=Schmidt|first3=Victor |last4=Dandres|first4=Thomas|date=2019-10-21|title=Quantifying the Carbon Emissions of Machine Learning|url=https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.09700|journal=arXiv:1910.09700 [cs, stat]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Henderson|first=Peter|last2=Hu|first2=Jieru|last3=Romoff|first3=Joshua|last4=Brunskill|first4=Emma|last5=Jurafsky|first5=Dan|last6=Pineau|first6=Joelle|date=2020-01-31|title=Towards the Systematic Reporting of the Energy and Carbon Footprints of Machine Learning|url=http://arxiv.org/abs/2002.05651|journal=arXiv:2002.05651 [cs]}}</ref>, and tools and recommendations for best practice have been created<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=ML CO2 Impact|url=https://mlco2.github.io/impact/|url-status=live|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2021-03-27|website=}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/Breakend/experiment-impact-tracker|title=Experiment Impact Tracker|date=2021-03-27|website=|url-status=live|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=}}</ref>.
 
== Machine Learning Application Areas ==
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Estimates of electricity use of AI
 
* '''Cloud comparison''': The major cloud computing providers, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, have varying targets and carbon intensities for their services. Google now publishes hourly estimates of the proportion of carbon-free energy (CFE) and the carbon intensity for all its cloud regions<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://cloud.google.com/sustainability/region-carbon|title=Carbon free energy for Google Cloud regions|website=Google Cloud|language=en|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref>.
==== Cloud comparison ====
====* '''Energy buying ===='''
The major cloud computing providers, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, have varying targets and carbon intensities for their services.
* '''Targets''': Several Cloud Providers have published CO2 emission targets:
 
Google** nowAWS, publishes100% hourlyrenewable estimatesenergy offor theits proportiondata ofcenters carbon-freeby energy2030, (CFE)on and the carbon intensitytrack for all its cloud regions2025<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://cloudblog.googleaboutamazon.comco.uk/sustainability/regionamazon-carbonbecomes-the-worlds-largest-corporate-purchaser-of-renewable-energy|title=CarbonAmazon freebecomes energythe forworld’s Googlelargest Cloudcorporate regionspurchaser of renewable energy|date=2020-12-10|website=GoogleUK Day One CloudBlog|language=en|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref>.
** Google, 24/7 carbon-free energy (real-time matching of supply and demand, without buying renewable generation certificates) by 2030<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/inside-google-cloud/announcing-round-the-clock-clean-energy-for-cloud/|title=Google Cloud aims for carbon-free energy for its data centers|website=Google Cloud Blog|language=en|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref>.
 
** Microsoft, carbon negative by 2030<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/|title=Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030|date=2020-01-16|website=The Official Microsoft Blog|language=en-US|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref>.
==== Energy buying ====
 
==== Targets ====
 
AWS, 100% renewable energy for its data centers by 2030, on track for 2025<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blog.aboutamazon.co.uk/sustainability/amazon-becomes-the-worlds-largest-corporate-purchaser-of-renewable-energy|title=Amazon becomes the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy|date=2020-12-10|website=UK Day One Blog|language=en|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref>
 
Google, 24/7 carbon-free energy (real-time matching of supply and demand, without buying renewable generation certificates) by 2030<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/inside-google-cloud/announcing-round-the-clock-clean-energy-for-cloud/|title=Google Cloud aims for carbon-free energy for its data centers|website=Google Cloud Blog|language=en|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref>.
 
Microsoft, carbon negative by 2030<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/|title=Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030|date=2020-01-16|website=The Official Microsoft Blog|language=en-US|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref>.
 
=== Processing Units ===
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== Background Readings ==
*''' Efforts to quantify the CO2 impact of ML''' have been undertaken<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Lacoste|first=Alexandre|last2=Luccioni|first2=Alexandra|last3=Schmidt|first3=Victor |last4=Dandres|first4=Thomas|date=2019-10-21|title=Quantifying the Carbon Emissions of Machine Learning|url=https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.09700|journal=arXiv:1910.09700 [cs, stat]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Henderson|first=Peter|last2=Hu|first2=Jieru|last3=Romoff|first3=Joshua|last4=Brunskill|first4=Emma|last5=Jurafsky|first5=Dan|last6=Pineau|first6=Joelle|date=2020-01-31|title=Towards the Systematic Reporting of the Energy and Carbon Footprints of Machine Learning|url=http://arxiv.org/abs/2002.05651|journal=arXiv:2002.05651 [cs]}}</ref>, and tools and recommendations for best practice have been created<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=ML CO2 Impact|url=https://mlco2.github.io/impact/|url-status=live|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2021-03-27|website=}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/Breakend/experiment-impact-tracker|title=Experiment Impact Tracker|date=2021-03-27|website=|url-status=live|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=}}</ref>.
 
== Online Courses and Course Materials ==
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== Libraries and Tools ==
*'''ML CO2 Impact''': A tool to calculate Machine Learning CO2 emissions, available [https://mlco2.github.io/impact/ here].
*'''Experiment Impact Tracker''': Anther CO2 emissions calculator providing information about power draw from CPU and GPU, hardware information, python package versions, estimated carbon emissions information, and in California realtime carbon emission information, available [https://github.com/Breakend/experiment-impact-tracker here].
*'''Microsoft Emissions Impact Dashboard''': A tool by Microsoft to track carbon emissions related to Microsoft cloud services usage, [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sustainability/emissions-impact-dashboard here]
* '''Codecarbon''': A software package that integrates into Python codebase to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the cloud or personal computing resources used to execute the code, [https://codecarbon.io/ here]
 
== Data ==
 
* '''Hugging Face Model Cards''': Several model cards of trained Hugging Face models report the amount of CO2 it took to train them, [https://huggingface.co/models?other=co2_eq_emissions here].
 
== References ==