Apple AI’s ambitions leave big questions about their climatic goals

“A year ago, when they were talking about Apple’s intelligence, surprised me how they were doing” all of the above, “says Ben Lee, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania at the Department of Electricity Engineering and Systems Engineering, who was previously consulted by dead and Google on sustainability.

“This indicates that they are not completely sure that the smaller models give them what they want on the device,” he says. “I think they are trying to develop capacity first and foremost, and then try to discover efficiency later.”

The way to develop the capabilities of artificial intelligence was not smoothly advanced, with painful major features delay The next generation has pushed Siri more and back-back-with the upgrade now unexpected until the Spring of 2026. Recently Bloomberg reports It indicates that the Apple leadership weighs a step to Openai or human technology to help provide promises of artificial intelligence in the end for a new version of Siri, with these external models tests on Apple cloud infrastructure. The question is: Will Lisa Jackson, Vice -President of Environment, Politics and Social Initiatives in Apple, will be on this schedule when making these decisions?

Even if it is, there is no avoidance from the electricity needed to manufacture semiconductor chips that operate apple intelligence on the device (such as A18 and A18 Pro) chips and ABER servers (Apple (It is said Apple’s M4 chips from this year). “Taiwan does not have such a rapid publication of renewable energy, and South Korea, another place that adheres to many chips, he has many of them at all,” says Li.

In March, TSMC-the semiconductor chips made in Taiwan, which goes away on the leading iPhone-a 2024 Report, including an ESG sectionThere were 19 percent He increases In greenhouse gas emissions per unit of 10 % Decrease. There was also a 14 percent increase in water use, and the drums, only about 14 percent of its energy used from renewable energy sources.

TSMC journalism team, when asked to comment, referred to TSMC Speed up the schedule for renewable energy By 10 years in 2023, a 20,000 -hour joint purchasing agreement, with a value of 20,000 hours of renewable energy, and its partnership with Apple on Restore the box For carbon removal projects.

But Lina Zhang of Greenpeace wants to see TSMC more invested in the energy, solar and thermal energy industries in Taiwan, after Google advanced there. “The majority of renewable energy is purchased in TSMC,” she says. “They can take the initiative to invest more. From the negative consumer to the proactive determinants, this is what we are trying to call TSMC to do more.”

IPhone

Of course, one of the most difficult threads that must be resolved in all of this is the incompatibility of construction chips capable of artificial intelligence for iPhone devices that are used only on average Two and a half years Before the customer’s promotions to a new device.

“Unlike data centers, which buy devices and then publish them for a very long time and get a very high use, do not get it on the side of consumer electronics,” says Li. “Apple would like us to update our devices every two years or so. So this is the difficulty. You have domain emissions figures 3 (for the supply chain), then very high update rates and relatively bad use.”