AI hogs energy and its regulation must take its climate impact into account

livemint.com:

India is undoubtedly a leading country in the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. A recent survey on cloud complexity by NetApp, a data infrastructure company, revealed that 70% of firms in India have AI projects up and running, as against 53% in the US, and that 91% of the companies in India plan to use their data to train AI models, as against a global average of 62%.

Globally, the AI industry is expected to grow by 37% annually till 2030, with great excitement over the opportunities it creates as also trepidation on its misuse. Regions/countries like the EU, US and China are expected to implement sweeping regulatory measures to bring about greater transparency, establish new standards and address activities that pose a systemic risk to citizens, with the EU already working on a bill to institute an “AI liability directive" that would provide financial compensation to adversely effected people.

India too is cognizant of the need to develop a regulatory regime for AI, although it is likely to be light-handed, at least initially, with potential job losses its special focus. It is important, however, to recognize the two-way relationship between AI and the energy sector.

The electricity grids of today are only going to grow in complexity, with multi-dimensional flows of electricity now integrating all kinds of distributed and decentralized systems, including rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle power-packs, and so on. Combine this with the complexity that accompanies the deployment of hybrid systems such as wind-solar or offshore wind-solar-tidal power, or other combinations thereof.