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Many believe we are amid the next great leap forward in society due to the virtually unlimited capabilities artificial intelligence will offer in the coming years and while that may be true, many others are wondering if AI is killing the planet. It’s a question that has been asked more frequently in recent years as studies look into the environmental impact of AI and while ‘killing the planet’ might seem like a stretch there is some alarming data.
On a recent episode of the Terms of Service with Clare Duffy podcast, they spend the time discussing ‘Are Your Conversations With AI Killing the Planet?‘ And while this isn’t the end-all-be-all discussion on whether ChatGPT searches are destroying our natural resources, there are many data points that should raise alarm bells.
Is AI Killing The Planet? Let’s Take A Look
While you can smash the ‘play’ button on the episode above and listen, I’ve pulled some time stamps and talking points that caught my attention. After first discussing how data centers are set up with rows and stacks of computer chips resembling old school PCs. These generate a LOT of heat.
About 4-min into the discussion, Clare Duffy cites “in one study from the University of California Riverside, researchers estimated that exchanging 20 to 50 messages with ChatGPT uses roughly the equivalent of a regular-sized water bottle.” That’s water required to cool the computer chips. And while that is just an estimate of the water used, fresh water is a finite resource on planet earth and suddenly we have AI using an unfathomable amount every day.
AI Is Using Untold Amounts Of Electricity
Most AI companies are turning to renewable energy sources (wind, solar) to power but that’s not the reality of things just yet. As pointed out in the episode, many data centers are still relying on gas-powered electricity or even coal-powered electricity.
They also point out an estimate that by next year, data centers for AI and crypto will use more electricity than is consumed by the entire country of Sweden. Much of that electricity is being used to train AI models and while it’s hard to quantify what the greenhouse gas pollution from that energy use looks like, there are solid estimates.
An example used in the episode is Bloom, an open source AI model similar to ChatGPT albeit less powerful. They state “that training Bloom created 25 tons of CO2 emissions, and that doesn’t even account for actual user queries.” Put into real world numbers, they equate the greenhouse gas emissions from training this single AI model to 25 back-and-forth flights from New York to London… And this is all just to train the model!
Once an AI model is released to the public, the energy consumption (and water consumption in data centers) goes up exponentially. Tack on that by 2026, data centers will be estimated to account for 12% of all energy consumption on earth… Data centers. And that’s doubling from a current 3-6% estimate in the matter of just 1 year. Who knows where we’ll be in 5 years?
There are environmentally conscious options out there. One example they cite is Ecosia which uses 100% renewable energy to train the model and run the data centers. But it doesn’t take a PhD to recognize that if AI energy consumption continues at the current rate things will spiral out of control very, very quickly.
Purely out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT “is AI killing the planet?” and here is (most of) the answer ChatGPT spit back out… It’s not a ‘no’…
“AI itself isn’t inherently “killing the planet,” but it does have an environmental impact—especially in terms of energy consumption. Training large AI models, like ChatGPT or image generators, requires vast amounts of computing power, which in turn demands electricity. A single large AI model can consume as much energy as hundreds or even thousands of households over its lifecycle. AI isn’t the biggest polluter compared to industries like transportation, agriculture, or manufacturing, but it’s something that needs to be addressed as AI continues to grow. The key is balancing innovation with sustainability.”
For those that would rather read instead of listen to that Spotify episode above, you can find a full transcript of Clare Duffy and Sasha Luccioni’s talk about AI killing the planet right here.
Content shared from brobible.com.