It is safe to say that environmental degradation is not a distant nightmare anymore. It is here, and it is happening right now as you are reading this article. An article dating back to January 19, 2016, mentioned that Earth’s 2015 surface temperatures were the warmest since the modern record-keeping began in 1880. (1) "Only 11 years left to prevent irreversible damage from climate change", said the then General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés in 2019. (2) Fast forward to now, with only 5 years left, any strides made in combating the dangers of climate change on a global level are barely making progress. Environmental destruction is accelerating at an unprecedented pace yet it is hard to see tangible efforts being made in the right direction. The increased demand and dependence on AI, which might seem like a revolutionary step in the technical world, is only going to make matters worse. The rapid and mostly unchecked developments in this field are already posing a serious threat to humanity with little to no hope for change.
How does AI contribute to climate change?
For some, it may be hard to disagree with the fact that AI has made lives exceptionally easier. To be able to give any prompt to a chatbot and receive a relevant response in barely a few seconds doesn't sound bad at all. However, the long-term effects of AI will be detrimental to the planet if not taken care of in due time. The brilliance of Artificial Intelligence comes with the production of electronic waste on a massive scale, a staggering carbon footprint and rapid consumption of important resources. As models and algorithms become more and more complex, the required energy to run them also increases enormously. According to OpenAI researchers, the amount of computing power required to train cutting-edge AI models has doubled every quarter of a year since 2012. ( 3) In addition, an article published in Harvard Business Review tells us that thousands of megawatt hours of energy are required to train a singular AI model, roughly equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of hundreds of households in America. By 2026, we can expect an exponential increase in AI-related demands, exceeding the annual electricity consumption of a small country like Belgium. (4)
To put things into an understandable perspective, a single ChatGPT query uses ten times more electricity as compared to a typical Google search. (5)Sustaining such energy-intensive operations necessitates the use of data centres which are nothing but facilities created to accommodate the intense computational demands of artificial intelligence workloads. (6) Without this infrastructure, it is impossible to train and make use of highly complex machine learning models as well as algorithms. These data centres are filled with central processing units or CPUs which drive performance and store data. If you all can remember the old microcomputers we had, with those big CPUs that used to heat up at any chance they got, the image of hundreds of CPUs heating up all at once in a data centre would be detrimental and overload the electricity grid, to say the least. To add more to the problem, the traditional method of air cooling is insufficient to dissipate the amount of heat generated by AI workload. (7) Therefore, tech giants have now resorted to using water as an efficient cooling agent for data centres. Approximately nine liters of water are needed to evaporate per kilowatt-hour of energy consumed, a practice that is ecologically unsustainable and puts further pressure on already stressed water resources. By 2027, AI could be using 6.6 billion m^3 of water, if not more, spelling a major ecological disaster. (8)
The role of Big Tech
The unbridled ambition of Big Tech—driven by capitalist imperatives—has further exacerbated the environmental toll of AI. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others are in a relentless race to dominate the AI market, and some are already ahead of the others. In April of 2024, Google’s AI chief executive said that the company will be investing over $100 billion over time to develop AI technology. (9). Fast forward to October of the same year, Google CEO is affirmative that the investments are paying off, sending shares up over 5% in extended trading Tuesday. (10). Despite its pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030, Google’s emissions grew by 13 percent between 2022 and 2023. (11) Similarly, Microsoft’s goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030 has been derailed because of its AI program. It was only possible to find this data as Google and Microsoft publish their sustainability reports for the public to see, something that OpenAI refuses to do. The lack of transparency coupled with the capitalist drive of these tech giants is a concern that seems to grow each passing day. Their thirst for market dominance is putting society at an irreversible risk. This is not the first time that big corporations have favoured profit maximisation over environmental safety. The Amazon rainforest fires, started intentionally and illegally by arsonists who profit from agribusiness and the meat industry, is another example of how the environment has suffered at the hands of industrial behemoths.
Real-time effects of climate change and degradation
As I mentioned at the beginning of my article, we are watching our environment deteriorate first-hand. All the effects that scientists predicted - loss of ice sheets at sea, poles and mountain ranges, rise in sea levels, and more intense weather conditions - everything has been happening at an unprecedented level. Climate-related extreme events over the years have increased both in frequency and intensity. Between 2015 and 2019, the United Nations reported that at least 100 hectares of productive land were degraded every year, affecting the livelihoods of over one billion people. (12) Additionally, freshwater ecosystems in nearly half the world’s countries are under threat, with reduced river flows and shrinking surface water bodies. (13) The evidence is overwhelming, and yet, the urgency to address these issues is still lacking.
Is there a way out?
Even after all the damage that has been done so far, there still remains some hope that global warming can be slowed down, if not completely reversed. Governments around the world need to take urgent, policy-based decisions that address environmental issues in an informed and coordinated manner. Big tech needs to be held accountable for their actions about environmental sustainability by regulatory bodies and authorities. Strict and effective consequences need to be set in place for countries who fail to meet climate goals.
If AI is so powerful and efficient after all, then corporations and industries around the world should be harnessing it responsibly, using AI to promote ecologically sustainable practices. Concerned authorities can use AI for environmental monitoring, tracking emissions, aid clean agricultural practices and much more. The key lies in using AI as a means to an end rather than letting it spiral unchecked.
On a personal level, one significant step we can all take is to stop using AI. Tech giants like Google, Meta and X have developed their own AI-based search engines which are pretty much shoved in your face. Even using Google right now to look up stats and facts for this article, I am fed with an AI-generated result before anything else. Unfortunately, we cannot stop Big Tech from doing anything. What we can do is not use AI for something we did ourselves before AI was a thing, or actually try to eliminate it from our lives in totality. Being online, I have seen people use AI for anything and everything - assignments, making grocery lists, generating images of how they would look in their old age - the list is endless. This dramatic dependency is capable of costing us our cognitive abilities and habitat.
The negative impacts of AI are not limited to just one domain. The militarisation of AI is also on the rise, having implications on global security and warfare. The rapid inclusion of AI in academia is leading to cognitive decline among young students. Its impact on the environment, however, continues to be the most concerning threat of all. The rampant drive for dominance in AI for monetary gains, spearheaded by tech giants of the world, is pushing humanity to a dangerous tipping point. The fight against climate change is not only about reducing emissions or becoming carbon neutral, it is also about protecting our environment to ensure a liveable future for generations to come. By making timely decisions and holding the right people accountable, the trajectory of the world can be reversed before it is too late.
By Vanshika Malik
Vanshika Malik is a second-year student pursuing English Literature at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. She is an avid reader and an even more avid music enthusiast. She, in her own words, loves keeping up with the world and tries her best to.
References
- https://earth.org/the-green-dilemma-can-ai-fulfil-its-potential-without-harming-the-environment/
- https://hbr.org/2024/07/the-uneven-distribution-of-ais-environmental-impacts
- https://www.rwdigital.ca/blog/how-much-energy-do-google-search-and-chatgpt-use/
- https://qz.com/google-spend-100-billion-ai-development-deepmind-ceo-1851412787
- https://www.investopedia.com/google-ceo-says-ai-investments-are-paying-off-8736480
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