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[Explored] Mairie de Londres – City Hall of London flickr photo by Jopa Elleul shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license
One interesting thread (via Kate T) that emerged in a discussion in ETMOOC2’s inquiry into Artificial Intelligence and the emergence of ChatGPT, Bard and others was the impact on the environment. I hadn’t really thought much about it (I know, I should have) but when we think of how cryptocurrencies and NFTs all came to have a rather outsized impact via energy use and computing power, it made sense that generative AI would likely be doing the same.
An article in my May 2023 Wired magazine entitled “Generative AI’s Dirty Secret” by Chris Stokel-Walker also explores the topic, and while data from companies like Microsoft and Google and others releasing AI into the world is hard for outside researchers to come by, the article notes that “AI-fortified search engines are likely to demand far more computing power, which means a massive increase in energy use and carbon emissions.” (Stokel-Walker).
I suspect these companies are already working on data center efficiencies and other alternatives to the way the algorithms work to combat this — at the least, conserving energy will save them money, but also, many of these companies have environmental, climate-focused plans in their mission statements, although how much we should trust those mission statements in a business model designed for profit over the common good remains to be seen.
Kate shared these three articles that might be of interest on this topic:
- AI’s Carbon Footprint (via MIT Technical Review): https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/14/1063192/were-getting-a-better-idea-of-ais-true-carbon-footprint/
- Energy Consumption (via Mark Labbee, at Tech Target): https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/feature/Energy-consumption-of-AI-poses-environmental-problems
- Risks and Benefits (Environmental Science & Technology): https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c01106
This diagram — which widens the scope a bit — is from the article at Environmental Science & Technology:
As with all things, technology-related, we have to keep an eye on the picture of the world at large, and consider the impacts on the environment and climate, and us, as we dive into new tools and consider the pros and cons.
Peace (And This Planet),
Kevin
I left a comment on another one of your articles just a few minutes ago, talking about how ETMOOC2 demonstrates a way for people from many places to connect around specific issues.
AI use of energy and the positives/negatives seems like one of the topics that people might use the ETMOOC2 model for collecting and sharing ideas and generating conversation.
It’s probable that there are groups already talking about this. Finding them, adding them to a “list”, then joining one or more conversations, is something youth could be spearheading as service-learning research.