In just a few years, AI has become commonplace and a digital assistant in many people's everyday lives. We can instantly translate texts into all kinds of languages, get shortcuts to programming codes, retrieve summaries of long reports, write party songs and school assignments, find films on Netflix, new music on Spotify, and much more.
However, we do not always use the technology for something useful, according to Professor Søren Hauberg from DTU Compute, whose research field is AI.
"AI is often just used for fun and pure nonsense. Maybe someone wants to generate an image of a clown eating a banana, and then you've just used up lots of electricity and water for no good reason," says Søren Hauberg.
The professor is referring to the very issue that is gaining increasing attention around the world: AI is a resource-intensive technology. It consumes hectolitres of water and countless terawatt-hours of electricity – both when the technology is developed and then when it is used.
