- The alltrail hiking application has just launched a new level of subscription with AI functions
- We ask the Director of Technology of Alltrails how Alltrails reconciles the environmental impact of AI with the application mission statement to help people enjoy the outdoors.
- He says that Alltrails takes measures to reduce the cost of energy and maximize efficiency by implementing the functions of AI
Earlier this week, we reported that the Alltrails hiking application had launched a new subscription level: Peak, a more expensive subscription plan that uses AI tools to improve your outdoor experience.
These tools include a community heat map, a common feature in the best physical conditioning applications, such as Alltrails and contemporaries such as Strava. The heat map shows where other users are often walking, which allows you to classify the paths by popularity.
Other features include outdoor lenses, which uses the camera of your phone to identify plants, insects and reference points and trail conditions, which provides updated information not only on the climate, but also in soil conditions, the snow layer and even the activity of mosquitoes in different parts of its path.
The Alltrails Peak subscription level costs $ 79.99 / £ 79.99 (around AU $ 125) per year, probably due to the cost of the AI used.
It is well known that AI is an intensive energy technology, one of the most popular statistics on which it is extended is that Chatgpt-4 uses the equivalent of 519 ml of water, a little more than an average bottle, by email of 100 words generated. This statistic comes from the University of California, Riverside, in a study produced in collaboration with the Washington Post.
AI does not seem to be an ecological technology to use at this time, due to its energy and cooling requirements. Alltrails, however, says that it is dedicated to preserving the outdoors that its users love; The company is associated with permission does not trace and a non -profit tree planted, and contributes to 1% of its annual income to environmental organizations.
When I talked to Alltrails technology director James Graham, about the new subscription levels, I also asked him if the use of AI by Alltrails disagreed with the company’s environmental messages.
Be careful with AI
“Great question. That is something we think about each feature we build,” Graham told me.
“Our data scientists take the time to build characteristics such as this more efficient … We think about the size of the model, and for many of our characteristics, we do not need to use the largest and greatest intensity intensity model, so we do not always use the first -line model that consumes the greatest energy. We are very deliberate with the way we use it.”
Alltrails, apparently, tries to mitigate the impact of AI energy consumption and huge cooling requirements through the use of smaller and more efficient models specifically developed to implement its characteristics with a minimum impact. But Graham also thinks that as he evolves, his demands will decrease, telling me: “As the new technology comes out, we are already seeing that the cost of energy from the use of AI is decreasing, and we believe that the trend will continue,”
While energy demands each The individual instance of the use of AI can decrease, the increase in general The use of AI could compensate for these savings. A MIT report of January 2025 establishes that data centers already represent 1-2% of the use of global energy: by 2030, this could reach up to 21% due to the demands imposed on AI.
If more developers used smaller models and more energy efficient processes, we could avoid this serious prediction. However, although the tools of AI used by Alltrails are impressive and designed to stimulate more people to spend more time outside, which can be for the benefit of environmental causes, concerns will persist about the broader use of AI and what really means “not left trace.”
