In a new study, MIT researchers explain how AVs could significantly increase future global energy consumption, and what would need to happen to prevent it.
The carbon footprint of data centres that house the physical computing infrastructure used for running applications is massive, currently accounting for about 0.3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – equivalent to the annual emissions output of Argentina. To study the potential footprint of autonomous vehicles, the MIT researchers built a statistical model and determined that 1 billion autonomous vehicles, each driving for one hour every day with a computer consuming 840 watts, would use enough energy to generate about the same amount of emissions as data centres currently do.
The computationally intense AI behind autonomous vehicles represents a net-new source of emissions that could have dire consequences without four main changes, a new MIT study finds.