However, the environmental costs of this tool are often overlooked

But, as long as the public is largely left in the dark about what their daily AI use is actually doing to their planet, there will not be change

One day, AI might be able to be used as an effective tool to begin to eliminate some of today’s most severe environmental concerns.

tech companies need to be more transparent about their energy and water use

The question is if the responsibility for working to reduce the environmental damage associated with the use of AI should be a responsibility put on the shoulders of the individual users or rather tech companies and larger institutions creating and promoting its use

Therefore, it is clear concerns around AI are not simply a matter of data in the cloud, but an issue affecting the well-being of real communities across the U.S.

The Internal Energy Agency 2024 report projected that the energy use associated with AI, data centers, and cryptocurrency would be equal to the amount of energy used by the entire country of Japan by 2026. Additionally, it is estimated that generative AI alone is “expected to consume 10 times more energy in 2026 than it did in 2023.” One of the reasons that generative AI uses so much more energy than a Google search, sending an email, or posting on social media is because the machine learning component of generative AI uses a significant amount of energy for training and input of data in order for it to generate highly tailored responses to the individual request of millions of different users. The data centers used to run AI require more energy intensive systems to process the higher quantity of data compared to other technologies and are often primarily run on gas or coal-powered electricity.

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