The AI power drain
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- from Shaastra :: vol 04 issue 09 :: Oct 2025
As companies spend trillions on infrastructure to power the next wave of technology, the environmental toll poses a critical global challenge.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how people interact with the digital world. In order to fund information online, users are increasingly shifting from traditional search engines to AI-powered alternatives like Perplexity and Google's own AI search. This technology, used to generate text, images, and videos, comes with a significant energy cost. An AI search can consume up to 10 times more electricity than a standard web search. This energy intensity varies significantly depending on the specific task and the AI model used. For example, generating 1,000 images with AI models consumes, on average, 520 Wh, the equivalent of fully charging 24 smartphones.
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