Energy-Hungry AI Is Eating the Planet. But Is It Also Humanity's Best Hope?
AI has the potential to help humanity build a more sustainable future, but not until we address its monstrous carbon footprint. Experts from MIT and the University of California weigh in.
AI’s relationship with climate change is complicated. The data centers that power AI models require enormous amounts of energy and water. Yet for some, AI’s environmental impacts are considered a part of the necessary cost of technological advancement—especially when AI could help humanity tackle a range of climate challenges down the line, from ecology to natural disasters.
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But is AI’s energy use and impact on the Earth today worth the cost tomorrow? Will AI ultimately exacerbate an energy crisis—or push humanity toward a renewable future, preserving forests and restoring oceans along the way?
Trillion-dollar giants like Microsoft are planting flags in desert soil for new data centers and architecting a $100 billion “supercomputer” with OpenAI expected to have millions of specialized chips for intensive AI computations.
However, researchers warn that AI’s insatiable appetite for electricity and resources isn't sustainable, even if tech firms use renewable energy sources. In an interview, Robert Stoner, MIT researcher, energy council member, and director of the university’s Tata Center for Technology and Design, tells PCMag that tech firms are using up existing electricity sources and taking away from the grid faster than they can add to it.
To address their energy needs, many tech firms are entering power purchase agreements (PPAs), Stoner says. A PPA is when a third party provides energy—sometimes from renewable sources—to companies like Microsoft and Google.
“The problem with that is it’s not necessarily additional,” Stoner tells PCMag. “The companies can make themselves feel good by entering into these sorts of arrangements, [but] they’re really just consuming renewable energy that others would happily consume as well.”
Stoner believes that most tech firms are trying to be responsible. He admits that data centers’ “ethical frameworks” can vary, however, and more broadly, rampant energy consumption without adding new sources to the grid is “a big problem.” Because humans are developing artificial intelligence, we have to ultimately decide whether AI accelerates the destruction of our planet—and determine whether its tremendous energy consumption happening now is worth it in the long run.