Advancement of AI Threatens Energy and Economy Sector in 2024

By Shubhendra Anand , 27 December, 2024

In the era of artificial intelligence, getting answers for everything with just a click is easier. It shows the efficiency of artificial intelligence to rule every sector of an economy. A survey in 2024 reveals that the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) can threaten a nation's energy, climate, and financial sectors. Further, it warns against the growing dependency of the tech sector on artificial intelligence. Experts decode the survey to claim that AI poses specific threats to attain sustainability with its usage in 2024.

Artificial intelligence's wide adoption in several sectors of the economy marks it as an advancing technology. Further, it may rule various sectors at the cost of human workers, too. Hence, it shows that the rapid pace of AI can affect the employment sector in the future. AI usage causes staggering consumption of energy driven by the data centers. AI requires constant support of electricity to power high-level computations. Therefore, it results in 3.5 percent of global electricity consumption by the end of 2030. Here, the data centers acquire a significant share of electricity consumption.

Moreover, the growing electricity demand for data centers hinders the decarbonization goals of the tech sector. Big tech companies like Google and Amazon are adopting renewables to power their data entry. However, despite adopting clean energy, carbon emissions are going higher. Recently, Google reported a 48 percent increase in carbon emissions over five years till 2024.

Electricity may become the draining energy for consumers with AI. It is due to artificial intelligence's role in electric vehicles, data centers, generative AI, and others. Thus, it can result in power shortages in countries. Further, the application of AI is anticipated to affect economic growth, too. With increasing energy consumption, its costs will increase, too, like electricity. Thus, it will drain consumers more because of the high prices of power bills. Ultimately, it will result in high costs for goods and services in the economic sector.

 The figure shows AI lowers labor productivity, which implies it affects the employment sector: