How does artificial intelligence affect the environment?

AI is present in all areas of life: in search engines, devices, etc., and consumes a huge amount of resources. The electricity, water and carbon emissions consumption of this technology is comparable to that of thousands of ordinary homes. The training and operation of AI causes the depletion of valuable fresh water reserves. Furthermore, complexity requires greater processing power, which in turn increases resource consumption.
The equipment and data centers that support the technology incur additional construction and maintenance costs. In addition to carbon, there are emissions of dangerous origin: lead and mercury. Removing them also involves huge expenses, and doing so on a large scale is a difficult task.
The energy costs of AI are very high and, in most cases, these are non-renewable sources: oil, gas and coal. There is not enough green energy for these technologies. Greenhouse gas emissions from AI significantly accelerate climate change.
The technology requires specialized equipment, which also increases the environmental burden. High demand for these devices drives expensive production.

Despite high energy consumption, artificial intelligence plays a fundamental role in protecting and preserving the environment. Humanity faces major environmental challenges, and the application of AI plays important roles:

• Ensures effective monitoring.
• It analyzes large volumes of data from satellite images, tracks the smallest changes in the landscape, water levels in reservoirs, etc.
• Detection of natural pollution in the form of landfills.
• Accurate forecasting of possible natural disasters: floods, forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.
• Wildlife monitoring and analysis, monitoring of animal and bird populations using cameras.
• Important forecasting factors for agriculture, optimizing the use of fertilizers to reduce the load on the soil.

AI is used to optimize energy consumption in data centers. This technology has rapid growth and enormous potential.

If used wisely, the benefits of AI can far outweigh the harms of energy consumption and emissions. One suggestion is to locate data centers in regions where there is no water shortage and energy comes from renewable sources. For example, data centers in Iceland are powered by geothermal energy, and the cold climate contributes to efficient cooling of equipment without unnecessary energy consumption.
Scientists already speak vehemently about the need to responsibly manage resources to avoid obvious climate change. It turns out that modern technological giants, such as Microsoft or Elon Musk’s company, do not comply, nor even intend to do so, with their environmental obligations.
Ordinary users happily use AI chats to simulate fakes or other menial tasks. And they don’t even realize that they are harming the environment. Answering common questions in these chats requires a huge expenditure of resources. It should be noted that 519 ml of water are consumed per request, and in the United States alone, more than 435 million liters of valuable resources are spent per week for a single response. For comparison, this amount of water is consumed by the population of Odessa or the Dnieper in two days.

Data centers operate powerful servers that require considerable cooling. When performing calculations, these computers generate a large amount of heat. Water is used for cooling. Any GPT chat response is the analysis of a huge database by a server with considerable resource consumption.
When tech giants like Musk’s company built their data centers, they promised to use innovative cooling technologies to reduce water consumption. But it was later discovered that they were just words. When forced to publish consumption data, it was discovered that the companies used between 4% and 6% of the total water in the region where they were located. And due to the complexity of AI technology, carbon emissions increased by almost 50%.
The latest chips, made by Nvidia, generate even more power for the server, thus increasing processing power. That is, artificial intelligence is generating changes, both positive and negative, not only in the behavior and emotions of society, but also in the climate and the environment.

Artificial intelligence, when integrated into any area of ​​life, changes everything radically. Technology becomes increasingly complex and improved, but this process requires a large amount of resources. This has an impact on the environment and significantly accelerates climate change.
Tech elites see great prospects for this technology, which is why they invest large amounts of money in AI. In seven years, the artificial intelligence market is expected to multiply by 200. The entire digital field consumes too many resources. And AI is no exception. Electricity, non-renewable sources (oil, gas, coal), large amounts of water for cooling, as well as a significant increase in harmful emissions of carbon, mercury, lead and cadmium – all this is a result of the application of innovation.
All our daily activities – email, social networks, instant messaging, video games – are the constant work of data centers that consume a huge amount of valuable resources without restoring them. How is this justified? Does the development of technologies improve people’s lives? Yes, if they are used wisely, for example in medicine, education, science or agriculture.
The first step to reduce the consumption of AI resources is to propose the location of data centers with powerful computing equipment in specific regions with cold climates and the possibility of using renewable energy. Currently, economic technological aspects are being developed to reduce the cost of valuable resources for AI operation.

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