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Thursday, February 8th, 2024

As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires

Author:     DAVID BERREBY
Source:     Yale Environment 360
Publication Date:     FEBRUARY 6, 2024
 Link: As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires
Stephan:  

The AI revolution that is taking place, in my opinion, is not receiving anything like the attention from Congress that it should command. The United States Congress, particularly the House, reminds me of a kindergarten of spoiled brats arguing over who gets to get on the rocking horse. It is the worst most dysfunctional Congress in my lifetime, and the voters are to blame. How could anyone possibly think, to name but two examples, Jim Jordan or Marjorie Taylor Greene would be a good Congress member? We have the kind of Congress we do because American voters are not doing their jobs.

Inside the Guian Data Center of China Unicom, which uses artificial intelligence in its operations. 
Credit: Tao Liang / Xinhua / Getty

Two months after its release in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT had 100 million active users, and suddenly tech corporations were racing to offer the public more “generative A.I.” Pundits compared the new technology’s impact to the Internet, or electrification, or the Industrial Revolution — or the discovery of fire.

Time will sort hype from reality, but one consequence of the explosion of artificial intelligence is clear: this technology’s environmental footprint is large and growing.

A.I. use is directly responsible for carbon emissions from non-renewable electricity and for the consumption of millions of gallons of fresh water, and it indirectly boosts impacts from building and maintaining the power-hungry equipment on which A.I. runs. As tech companies seek to embed high-intensity A.I. into everything from resume-writing to kidney transplant medicine and from choosing dog food to climate modeling, they cite many ways A.I. could help reduce humanity’s environmental footprint. But legislators, regulators, activists, and international organizations now want to make sure […]

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1 Comment

  1. Albus Eddie on Thursday, February 8, 2024 at 7:15 am

    I continue to be surprised that the energy input costs of these systems are never discussed. The current system is just not sustainable, and our increased reliance upon computing prower requiring massive sustained energy inputs is boggling. Solar and wind can only provide so much renewable energy. We are all going to have to get used to living with less. It won’t be a disaster, but the idea of leaving these machines running in multiple settings 24/7 makes little sense.