Important to Look at AI With Sustainability Lens: Experts Experts discussed the importance of looking at AI with a sustainability lens to make sure it is an enabler of the green economy
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As artificial intelligence (AI) is a massive power guzzler, it is important to perceive AI with a sustainability lens and focus on ways in which it can be used in a more energy efficient manner, experts said at the ongoing Invest Karnataka 2025 summit.
Goldman Sachs Research forecasts that global power demand from data centers will increase 50 per cent by 2027 and by as much as 165 per cent by the end of the decade.
On the demand side for data centers, large "hyperscale" cloud providers and other corporations are building large language models (LLMs) capable of natural language processing and understanding. These models must be trained on vast amounts of information, using power-intensive processors.
On the supply side, hyperscale cloud companies, data center operators, and asset managers are deploying large amounts of capital to build new high-capacity data centers.
"The data center capacity in India will increase 20 times over the next few year," Daisy Chittilapilly, President, Cisco India and SAARC, said at a panel discussion on 'Sustainable manufacturing: Driving growth in the global green economy."
"India is one of the largest economies in the world and the infrastructure requirements are high," Chittilapilly said.
India is set to add 500 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2030, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday during his virtual address at Indian Energy Week 2025. He emphasised that the next two decades would be crucial for India's goal of becoming a 'Viksit Bharat' or developed India.
Experts highlighted the downside of AI when it comes to carbon emissions. "Today, AI and GenAI is a must to make sense of all the data. But we are still in a honeymoon stage where everyone is experimenting. But once you are scaling the use of AI and GenAI, we really need to take a note of the power consumption. We should use the smallest model possible that get the job done with least power consumption," said Rami Ahola, Partner and Global Industry Leader, Industrial Manufacturing, IBM Consulting.
