Artificial intelligence has taken over the world. ChatGPT, Gemini, Sora, AI Overview, Meta AI, and countless other platforms seem to exist in every app and website. AI videos have started to take over social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, and even AI music has been released.
This is all due to great technological advancements in Artificial Intelligence and programming in general. AI can have some great, ethical uses such as solving complex problems, automating tasks, and searching datasets. However, what many users are unaware of is the impact of generative AI on the environment, and its contribution to carbon emissions and climate change.
Now, what is generative AI? Generative AI is a system of algorithms or programs that, when given a prompt by a user, will generate an output. This output could be an image, text, audio, or video. This is different from other forms of artificial intelligence like predictive AI, which uses past information to predict future outcomes, whereas generative AI creates new content. ChatGPT, for instance, can create virtually anything from a prompt to images, audio, and even entire stories.
While this may seem like a fun pastime or a clever way to cheat on an assignment, generative AI, such as ChatGPT, has a wide impact on the environment. Generative AI uses data centers where user prompts are processed, each day using tons of water in order to keep chatbots running. In a day, it is estimated that ChatGPT uses 85,000 gallons of water answering and generating responses to prompts. According to MIT news, this use of water can “strain municipal water supplies” and “disrupt local ecosystems”.
Another problem with data centers is that they use large amounts of electricity, which produces electronic waste, such as lead and mercury which are highly toxic. Normal google searches also produce these waste products, but at a much slower rate as they use much less electricity in comparison to chatbots. In fact, one ChatGPT search uses 10 times the amount of energy as a normal google search.
The amount of electricity and water that AI data centers use is extremely detrimental to the environment, and the carbon emissions of data centers are responsible for 2.5-3.7 percent of global carbon emissions, exceeding the emissions of other industries such as the aviation industry, according to NPR.
There have been some efforts to mitigate this, but the industry has found itself in a loophole. As generative AI is being used to find ways to help climate change as a whole, it is simultaneously contributing to the issue itself. According to the Financial Times, “The AI boom has taken off at an awkward time for the fight against climate change because global temperatures are already rising much faster than scientists expected.”.
Generative AI has a huge impact on the environment, and there are not very many ways to help mitigate the issues that AI causes. ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI will continue to be used no matter the consequence. However, as an individual you can decide: Is generative AI worth it?
