Alissa MacMillan
Q: Is there any way to turn off AI on my Google Chrome search? It’s giving me senseless answers and, I imagine, uses a lot of extra energy.
A: AI here, AI there, AI, AI everywhere. Like you, I tried to help my mother by doing a Google search for her for a French osteopath in Princeton, New Jersey. The inescapable AI told me, no, there were none, but here is the history of French osteopathy.
According to Damian Gordon, lecturer in Computer Science at TU Dublin, those Google searches are the least of your worries. Each search is “like flicking on a lightbulb,” he says, and he imagines the feature will soon become optional or phased out.
More concerning, though, is the likes of ChatGPT and its less well-known siblings Claude, Gemini, Grok, and CoPilot which, as Gordon says, are much more resource-intensive. And image generating tools like Midjourney are 50-100 times and video generating tools like Veo or Sora 5,000-10,000 times more energy-demanding than text.
The difference between the AI in search engines like Google and that used in those like ChatGPT, is a matter of generative AI systems, Gordon explains. Thinking about it as a dictionary, ChatGPT requires we flip through the whole dictionary every time we ask it a question, a very inefficient process, while the system used by Google can flip right to the page you need.
“With more selective GPT, the energy usage is almost negligible, again, like a light bulb, where you skipped out having flipped through half of the dictionary.” Other programs, for example China’s DeepSeek, are getting even quicker at this process, perhaps because Chinese characters represent several words, requiring a smaller “dictionary,” he notes.
POWER USAGE
When it comes to ChatGPT and the like, water consumption is another story altogether. Gordon cites the well-known comparison: “Any query I do on ChatGPT is the same as opening a bottle of water and pouring it on the ground,” which means, “having a plan before you go into the AI is extremely helpful.” Even saying “thank you” and “please,” he adds, “just put it at the end of the last query. Each time we break it up into pieces, it has to search all the data and make new inferences,” another bottle of water gone.
Of course, it’s our being surrounded by water that makes Ireland prime real estate for housing the many data centres needed to power all of these tech tools.
“Most other countries use 2-3% percent of their electricity on data centres; we use about 20%,” Gordon says. “The reasons for that, beyond corporate tax and that we have the perfect climate, is the giant Atlantic cable connecting us to the USA, so we are a hub in terms of energy distribution, we don’t have laws around it as other countries do, and we have a leg into the EU.”
At the moment, 20% of electricity devoted to data centres doesn’t seem too onerous, he says, but if AI grows a lot, “there might be blackouts, or the need to make deals with other countries to balance energy needs.” As with other new forms of technology, “we have no idea of the long term problems.” Worldwide, AI has increased electricity demand by .01%, “which is not too bad,” with Ireland, the “outlier,” seeing an increase of around .5%.
INCAPABLE WITH ‘SUBTLE THINGS’
But there are other concerns. As we’ve seen with our searches, “AI is wrong an awful lot of the time,” Gordon notes. “It’s good about general things, like formatting documents, or answering simple questions,” he says. “For companies, it’s great, for an invoice or writing a letter of apology because a product is no good.” In fact, he explains, AI is really what we used to call “big data,” so it’s, “new clothes on an old story.” While big data required a computer programmer, now anyone can use it – “although that doesn’t mean anyone can use it well or that the data isn’t wrong.”
And it can be wrong up to 90% of the time, especially if you go too deep. “It has no comprehension of what it’s saying, like a phone predictive text,” and it’s incapable with “subtle things like education or emotion or nuance… it’s too prickly, everybody is different.”
And this is one of Gordon’s real concerns: the impact on children. At a moment when worries about the negative effects of social media and tech in the classroom are only increasing – the Netherlands has banned smart phones in schools and Australia is getting close – OpenAI is courting the Department of Education, saying it needs to be integrated into the classroom. As far as Gordon is concerned, “it’s only to sell a product,” as many of the claims about what AI can do are just not true.
‘IF THE SERVICE IS FREE, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT’
His own view is that phones should be banned for those under seven, slowly introduced with 100% supervision from 7-12, and allowed with light supervision from age 13. What’s required, he thinks, are intelligent laws and regulations, as have happened with other industries like alcohol and cigarettes.
As companies offer countries free virtual learning environments, “we can say safely, it means they are collecting your data from when you’re born, so they have complex psychological models,” and are very insidious. “Any service they offer for free, if the service is free, you are the product.”
While AI will accelerate a feeling of personalisation, he notes, it’s “great for content but it doesn’t make you a rounded learner,” or a rounded human being. It’s also designed for those who’ve designed it: 20-25 year old men, “not the most representative individual.”
If put in every school, the energy demands could skyrocket. “By 2035, it could be a significant problem,” demand potentially going from 4- 5% to 24-25%.
While, currently, the most environmental damage is being done by companies, “it’s good to teach everybody sustainability and awareness,” Gordon adds, including the impact of your actions and the companies you’re supporting. He suggests alternative web browsers, which focus on privacy and are non-commercial – like DuckDuckGo, Qwant, and MetaGer – or are green, like Ecosia, where 80% of their profits go to reforestation.
It’s not all bad, Gordon adds. AI can increase productivity and, “at the moment AI is not impacting electricity usage significantly.”
Even so, go on with your Google search but, for waters’ sake, be sure to hold off on thanking ChatGPT.
