AI and the Environment
This blog post is about my experience with AI, and what I am currently learning in my studies about the benefits, but more commonly, the negative environmental impacts that AI has on our world.
As Artificial Intelligence (AI), becomes seemingly more relevant in today’s news and studies, people are using it to make their lives and jobs easier. I’m not going to sit here and say that it does not make our lives easier, because it does for the most part, but the environmental impacts of using AI are so huge that most people can’t even wrap their heads around it. For example, every search that ChatGPT has, uses 2.9 watt hours, in comparison to a Google Search which uses 0.3 watt hours. Next time you do a search on ChatGPT, think about this comparison. It is hard though, to stop using AI, because even when you do a Google Search, the first thing that pops up is an AI overview, which I’m not going to lie, I use pretty much every time. It is hard to reduce your Artificial Intelligence environmental footprint when AI gives you no choice but to look at it.
In my classes that I am currently enrolled in, some of the professors are very adamant on not using AI, while others believe that it is a tool that will help my education. Sometimes I wish I could tell professors that they should be hard on using AI, just because of the environmental impact that it has. Now, there are some benefits to using Artificial Intelligence, like helping people make decisions, helping students through studying, and whatnot, but again the amount of natural resources that it takes is ginormous. The data centers that are being built to run these AI systems are causing consumers to pay higher electricity bills, without them even knowing. A single Amazon data center requires 600 Mega Watts, which is equivalent to the power demand for an entire city. So, I encourage you to take a look at your next electricity bill in comparison to what it normally is. Because if I haven’t said it enough, the fact that you are paying a higher price for the same amount of electricity will anger you to care about this topic.
We have already learned that the surge of Artificial Intelligence is significantly setting our climate efforts back, with it becoming normalized to use ChatGPT like Google, which I mentioned earlier, uses way more watt hours. I have also talked to people about the effects that AI has on the environment, and they just don’t seem to care. It is hard to get people to care which is why I am writing this blog post. I am frustrated and want change, which is why writing real, authentic media is such a power in today’s world. So, thanks for listening to my rant,
Signing off for today,
Emma