Artificial intelligence (AI) is an increasingly helpful tool that can help approach problems in all aspects of life. Its extensive help comes at a price, as it directly affects the environment with increasing electricity demand and water consumption.
The rapidly growing technology is very advantageous to society, as it helps develop new technological and scientific advancements. AI can help scientists analyze climate data to predict natural disasters, track deforestation and study pollution patterns. It also helps optimize energy efficiency for power grids and companies, ultimately reducing waste. AI helps farmers use their resources more efficiently, minimizing environmental harm and supporting sustainable agriculture.
But AI tools are a double edged sword.
While AI has many benefits, it requires a lot of energy and resources to function. The world-wide deployment of generative AI allows millions of people to use it in their daily lives and train AI models, which requires large-scale computational power to train and run models.
Data centers that house AI systems demand staggering amounts of energy to be maintained, leading to increasing carbon dioxide emissions, as well as needing great deals of water in order to cool down those systems. Data centers account for 3% of the total world consumption of energy. To put into context, the energy that takes to train GPT-3 is the same amount of that consumed by about 130 U.S. houses in a year.
Rapid advances in AI lead to frequent hardware technology upgrades, generating notable amounts of electronic waste. Some of these advanced hardwares, like advanced GPUs, use rare earth minerals. This increase in the demand contributes to mining, environment destruction and pollution.
The future impact of AI technology depends on how humans develop and use it responsibly.
ChatGPT has 400 million weekly active users worldwide, a number that has exponentially increased since its launch in Nov. 2022. Many students use AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly and Google Assistant. Schools are also increasingly using AI for things like plagiarism detection. “The use of AI in schools still needs to find its balance,” said earth science teacher Zach Miller. “When tools such as the calculator and computer came onto the scene it took time for them to find their appropriate role in the educational setting. Some people might be quicker to embrace its use than others.”
It is important to put the environment before convenience. “Technology has helped humans solve problems. I believe that it will continue to do that in the future,” said AP environmental science teacher Zachary Marotta. “Right now we are faced with global problems like the human population continuing to grow, resources being used at an increasing rate, and our planet’s climate changing. I hope with AI in the right hands solutions can be made and we can move towards a better planet for the next generations. In terms of offsetting energy consumption, we will need to continue to make advancements in renewable energy sources to offset the energy consumption of AI,” Marotta continued.
AI is undoubtedly leaving a significant environmental footprint, but its potential for improving sustainability and conservation is also of great value. The key to fully tackling this conflict is to make AI more energy-efficient.
The future of AI is unclear, but if society continues using it at the current rate, the environment will face dire consequences.
