Artificial intelligence is now a permanent part of the global economy, driving innovation and productivity across sectors. It is not just digital technology that will be affected, and there are potential for new breakthroughs in health care, transportation and climate research.

B.C. Premier David Eby has touted the potential of AI for the province, and singled out the Vancouver-based biotechnology company AbCellera for praise, which has used AI to discover new treatments for diseases including cancer.

It is not debatable that AI is here to stay here, and that it will reshape industries across the board and create new economic opportunities.

But these opportunities come at a big energy cost. AI technologies, especially advanced generative models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, use a massive amount of electricity. A single query to ChatGPT uses 10 times more energy than a regular Google search.

Globally, AI-driven data centres are expected to increase electricity demand by 160 per cent by 2030. According to the RBC Climate Action Institute, data centres........

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