“A year ago, when they were talking about Apple Intelligence, it struck me how they did a” all that precedes “, right? They had their own thing, but they could fall back on Chatgpt, “said Ben Lee, professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Electric Engineering and Systems, who previously consulted for Meta and Google on sustainability.
“This suggests that they are not sure that the smaller models give them what they want on the device,” he said. “I think they are trying to develop capacity above all, then try to find efficiency later.”
The path to the development of more advanced AI capabilities has not been exactly fluid, with painfully key characteristics delayed And the new generation Siri has grown more and more back – with the upgrade which is not expected before spring 2026. Recent recent Bloomberg Reporting suggests that Apple’s leadership weighs on an Openai or Anthropic technology to help finally promise its AI promises for a new version of Siri, with tests from these external models on Apple’s cloud infrastructure. The question is: Lisa Jackson, vice-president of the environment, policies and social initiatives of Apple, will this table when these decisions are taken?
Even if it is, there is no distance from the electricity necessary to make the advanced semiconductive fleas which feed the Apple Intelligence point (such as the chips A18 and A18 pro) and the own Apple AI servers (would have Apple M4 fleas since this year). “Taiwan does not have such a rapid deployment of renewable energy, and South Korea, another place that makes a lot of tokens, does not have much,” explains Lee.
In March, TSMC – the semiconductor flea manufacturer based in Taiwan which feeds flagship iPhones – Place a 2024 report, including a section on ESG: There was a 19% increase in greenhouse gas emissions per unit of product compared to its 10% target decrease. There was also a 14% increase in water use and, please, only around 14% of its energy used came from renewable energies.
The TSMC press team, when asked for comments, said TSMC accelerate its chronology of renewable energies In 10 years in 2023, a joint 20 -year -old market agreement for 20,000 gigawatt hours of renewable energy, and its partnership with Apple on the Restore the fund For carbon elimination projects.
But Lena Chang de Greenpeace wants to see TSMC invest more in the Taiwan wind, solar and geothermal energy industries after Google’s advance. “The majority of renewable TSMC energies are purchased,” she says. “They can take the initiative to invest more. From a passive consumer to a proactive prosumer, that’s what we try to call TSMC to do more. ”
A life after death iPhone
Of course, one of the most delicate threads to resolve in all of this is the incompatibility of the construction of compatible fleas for iPhones which are used on average for two and a half years Before a customer goes to a new device.
“Unlike the data centers, which buy equipment, then deploy them for very long lifetime and get a very great use, you do not get it on the electronic side consumer public,” explains Lee. “Apple would like us to refresh our equipment every two years approximately. It is therefore the difficulty. You have the emissions number 3 (for the supply chain), then very high cooling rates and relatively bad use. ”
