January 31, 2024
3 min read
A Brookings Institution report warns that energy-hungry artificial intelligence tech will worsen the climate crisis
CLIMATEWIRE | It’s been celebrated for its potential to save lives through improved forecasting during deadly weather.
But artificial intelligence also plays “a significant role in exacerbating the climate crisis” and could widen gaps that have left marginalized people highly vulnerable to global warming, warns a Brookings Institution report released Tuesday.
“By fundamentally changing how we live, both AI and climate change could tip the scales of U.S. communities in ways that are unfair or unjust,” says the report, written by two Brookings Metro analysts and a visiting fellow.
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The report from the left-leaning think tank cited comments earlier in January by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, that “we still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology.”
The authors highlight AI’s soaring energy consumption as it undertakes increasingly complex tasks. Training a chatbot requires roughly the same amount of energy as 1 million U.S. homes consume in an hour, the report says.
“The more we ask models to perform wide-ranging tasks, the greater the amount of energy and carbon necessary,” the report says.
In addition to releasing growing amounts of greenhouse gases, AI data centers require large tracts of land and consume large amounts of water.
“With climate change creating droughts and water shortages, data centers face heightened scrutiny for their unsustainable practices,” the authors wrote, adding that some projects in the Southwest “strain…
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