Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: AI and Energy Use

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07/01/2025 Added

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Ever wondered how much energy AI really uses? Guy dives into it in this episode of AI in the Classroom. University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) | College of Education and Human Sciences (CEHS) | Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education (TLTE)

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[00:00:00.383]Coming up on AI in the Classroom.
[00:00:02.485]AI and energy use.
[00:00:04.371](upbeat music)
[00:00:09.609]Hi, my name is Williams
[00:00:11.177]a grad student at UNL.
[00:00:12.946]And today
[00:00:13.446]we are talking about
[00:00:14.531]energy use and AI.
[00:00:17.317]And and I'm Guy Trainin.
[00:00:18.301]I'm a professor here at UNL.
[00:00:20.203]And I have been talking about
[00:00:22.372]AI for quite a while.
[00:00:23.590]And one of the topics of conversations
[00:00:26.326]when we
[00:00:26.826]talked about ethics of AI,
[00:00:28.411]we talked about students
[00:00:29.829]potentially cheating.
[00:00:31.097]We talked about people using it
[00:00:33.216]and not being careful enough.
[00:00:34.534]We talked about the biases,
[00:00:35.919]but one of the things that always came up
[00:00:38.321]was the cost to the environment
[00:00:40.957]through energy use.
[00:00:42.459]And early on,
[00:00:44.310]the training of them all
[00:00:45.845]in every query was
[00:00:49.382]considerably more expensive,
[00:00:51.067]considerably more
[00:00:52.352]consuming more energy
[00:00:54.788]then
[00:00:56.673]then a query with Google.
[00:00:58.808]So one of the things we used to say
[00:01:00.376]early on is like,
[00:01:01.411]if you can Google it
[00:01:03.430]and get the answer immediately, do that.
[00:01:06.066]Don't use AI.
[00:01:07.217]Well, two things have happened.
[00:01:08.351]Now, if you Google it,
[00:01:09.819]you also get an AI response.
[00:01:11.738]So those things have really merged
[00:01:14.924]into each other.
[00:01:15.692]But the second thing that has happened
[00:01:17.494]is that the costs of AI
[00:01:19.345]over running
[00:01:20.563]a query in AI
[00:01:21.931]has really gone down.
[00:01:23.466]This is a chart that,
[00:01:26.035]Ethan Mollick,
[00:01:26.736]who's one of the most important voices,
[00:01:29.472]I think, in thinking about how,
[00:01:32.942]AI especially generative AI,
[00:01:35.495]LLMs are changing
[00:01:37.263]what we're doing in business,
[00:01:38.681]in education, in other areas.
[00:01:41.601]If you have not
[00:01:42.302]followed him on LinkedIn,
[00:01:44.204]this is an opportunity.
[00:01:45.555]He also produces content in other venues,
[00:01:48.541]but he's worth
[00:01:50.026]just seeing where he's at
[00:01:51.461]and what he's publishing.
[00:01:52.545]And in this case, he's
[00:01:53.863]really focusing on the costs of AI.
[00:01:58.802]And the unit here is a million tokens.
[00:02:01.054]Tokens are not exactly, but mostly
[00:02:04.107]words that the,
[00:02:06.943]large language models use to process.
[00:02:10.547]So that's their basic unit is a token.
[00:02:13.233]And here you can see that in 2023
[00:02:17.854]GPT-4 was consuming about
[00:02:20.323]was costing about $50
[00:02:23.326]for a million tokens,
[00:02:24.811]which is quite big in energy consumption.
[00:02:27.814]But you can see that Gemini 2.5 Flash,
[00:02:31.601]for example,
[00:02:32.385]which is the cheapest model,
[00:02:34.454]is considerably better
[00:02:37.240]in performance.
[00:02:38.708]And that's the Y axis,
[00:02:40.810]but is costing,
[00:02:43.446]a fraction of a dollar per million.
[00:02:47.951]That means that for $1 you are getting,
[00:02:54.190]5 - 6 million, tokens,
[00:02:56.893]which is an incredible savings.
[00:03:00.246]And what we're seeing
[00:03:01.664]watching these graphs
[00:03:02.916]is there is an expectation
[00:03:05.051]that this will keep getting cheaper.
[00:03:08.171]So when we were starting out
[00:03:11.140]on large language models,
[00:03:12.725]the costs were very high.
[00:03:14.327]We were very worried
[00:03:15.695]and actually all those tech giants
[00:03:18.398]they were thinking about starting up
[00:03:20.166]nuclear plants and getting more energy,
[00:03:23.169]and that has quieted down.
[00:03:25.355]It's not completely gone
[00:03:26.623]because we're seeing two things.
[00:03:28.424]We're seeing
[00:03:29.225]it's getting much, much cheaper,
[00:03:30.677]but we're also seeing it,
[00:03:33.663]the quantities of just use going up.
[00:03:37.033]So while it is getting cheaper,
[00:03:39.185]there are more and more users,
[00:03:41.955]it means a few things
[00:03:43.873]that I think are important.
[00:03:45.008]One is that the energy load on the planet
[00:03:48.945]is considerably smaller
[00:03:50.263]than we ever anticipated,
[00:03:51.631]and keeps getting smaller.
[00:03:53.132]The second one,
[00:03:54.100]and maybe even more important,
[00:03:55.652]it means that,
[00:03:58.171]AI
[00:03:59.822]for every person on the planet
[00:04:02.258]is within reach.
[00:04:03.726]Because if this kept being expensive.
[00:04:06.362]In the beginning,
[00:04:07.096]they just released it for almost free
[00:04:08.798]or for free
[00:04:09.465]because they want to make sure
[00:04:10.817]lots of people use it,
[00:04:12.035]but eventually
[00:04:12.752]they have to charge for it.
[00:04:13.803]But if it's getting considerably cheaper,
[00:04:15.905]it means that the amount
[00:04:17.373]that they have to charge companies,
[00:04:18.875]and especially individuals.
[00:04:20.343]And I am thinking about
[00:04:21.577]not just the United States,
[00:04:22.929]but really
[00:04:23.529]what's happening in Guyana,
[00:04:24.764]what will happen in India,
[00:04:26.015]what would happen across the globe.
[00:04:28.234]And this is an opportunity
[00:04:29.986]to make sure
[00:04:30.603]that there's actually
[00:04:32.021]equal access
[00:04:33.256]across many places,
[00:04:34.540]because the cost is going down
[00:04:37.543]and not weighing on the environment.
[00:04:39.696]So if you're concerned about energy,
[00:04:42.465]keep being concerned about the energy.
[00:04:44.167]But know that the costs for AI
[00:04:47.971]to run are considerably lower.
[00:04:50.890]Great.
[00:04:52.692]And we'll see you next time
[00:04:53.743]on AI in the Classroom.

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Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: AI and Energy Use

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