The dangers of AI’s body

By Stephanie Ross


When you think of AI what do you think of? For me, I think of a program I see on my computer.  A bodiless ghost that just magically and effortlessly produces answers to questions that I cannot even begin to comprehend. I think of a powerful tool that has the ability to solve the world's greatest mysteries. But to run artificial intelligence, there are physical structures and servers that it runs on.  And these servers are massive. 

Image of data centers in Ashburn in Loudon County, Virginia, on Sunday, July 16, 2023. 


To solve the world's greatest problems, it's going to take a lot of energy. As Erik Larson said in his chat about ChatGPT at Stevens Institute of Technology, “if you’re worried about climate change stop asking [chatgpt] questions”. AI servers use a ton of (most likely nonrenewable) energy to run. While it is a powerful tool, it also takes powerful servers to run. 


In the background, the technology relies on a multitude of specialized computer chips, and in the forthcoming years, these chips could demand a substantial amount of electrical power.  It’s impossible to quantify A.I. 's energy use exactly, because companies like OpenAI disclose very few details.  However, a recent analysis, projects that by 2027, A.I. servers could consume anywhere from 85 to 134 terawatt hours (Twh) of electricity annually. This is approximately equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of countries like Argentina, the Netherlands, and Sweden, and it accounts for about 0.5 percent of the world's current electricity usage (that's a lot of electricity).


Energy usage isn't the only way AI servers are impacting our environment. These servers produce a massive amount of energy, and therefore get extremely hot. One study by Cornell University estimates that Google's data centers in the U.S. consumed 12.7 billion liters of fresh water for cooling the sites in 2021. Cornell researchers also looked at AI programs that allow users to ask questions of a chatbot, and estimated that one "conversation" with ChatGPT that involved roughly 20 to 50 words amounted to the equivalent of a 500-milliliter bottle of water for cooling purposes.


The environmental impact of AI's servers are especially interesting because when asked what technology people believe will solve climate change, their first response is AI (this is from an informal poll we did at Pew Research Center to come up with ideas of what climate “saving” technologies to list in an upcoming climate poll). But while so many people believe that artificial intelligence will be humanity's saving grace for the environment, not enough people are talking about how artificial intelligence is harming the environment in the meantime. Do not get me wrong, I do believe that artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that will be able to help society in many ways.  I just also believe that it is important to bring awareness to the fact that there are unintended environmental consequences of the tool itself. AI’s physical self is not insignificant, and therefore should not be forgotten about. 



Citations


Li, Pengfei, et al. “Making AI Less ‘Thirsty’: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models.” Arxiv, 6 Apr. 2023, arxiv.org/abs/2304.03271. 


Vries, Alex. “The Growing Energy Footprint of Artificial Intelligence.” Joule, 2023, www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00365-3. 

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