A gaggle of greater than 100 organizations has revealed an open letter calling on the AI business and regulators to mitigate the tech’s dangerous environmental impacts simply days earlier than main business CEOs, heads of state, teachers, and nonprofits descend on Paris for a serious AI convention.
The letter, which bears the signatures of distinguished advocacy teams, together with Amnesty Worldwide and the AI Now Institute, notes there’s “growing proof” of AI programs driving up emissions, “locking in” reliance on non-renewables, and exhausting crucial sources. But little is being completed to deal with these unfavorable externalities because the tech sector and governments justify additional investments in AI, based on the letter.
“AI can by no means be a ‘local weather answer’ if it runs on fossil fuels,” the letter reads. “We, the signatories, demand that AI programs be made appropriate with our planetary boundaries.”
The signatories lay out clear calls for, calling for — amongst different issues — AI infrastructure, together with knowledge facilities, to be fossil fuels-free. The push to construct infrastructure to develop and run AI has strained electrical grids to the breaking level, forcing some utilities to lean on coal and different environmentally unfriendly sources of energy, the letter notes.
“International knowledge heart electrical energy consumption might double to over 1,000 terawatts by 2026 — equal to Japan’s annual electrical energy use,” reads the letter, citing knowledge from the Worldwide Power Company. “In elements of the world, this rising demand is pushing energy infrastructure to its limits, prolonging and intensifying our dependency on fossil fuels, the air pollution from which is linked to public well being points.”
The letter additionally urges governments and tech corporations to make sure that new knowledge facilities don’t deplete water and land sources, and keep transparency about AI’s environmental impacts all through the “whole AI lifecycle.”
Most knowledge facilities, which may span thousands and thousands of sq. ft, require a number of water not solely to chill the chips inside, but additionally to take care of secure humidity ranges for computing gear. By one estimate, if 1 in 10 U.S. residents requested OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT to jot down an e mail every week, it’d price greater than 435 million liters of water.
The letter’s signatories assert that their calls for “signify the naked minimal” wanted to mitigate the continuing hurt from unchecked AI growth.
“International locations and communities most weak to speedy local weather change are first to be impacted by the harms of AI and its computational calls for, and so they have much less say in its growth,” the letter reads. “We should transfer past viewing technological progress as inherently helpful or limitless, and as a substitute prioritize AI processes that contribute meaningfully to society whereas minimizing environmental and human hurt.”
Sadly for the undersigned, the U.S., the place most main AI corporations are based mostly, has signaled that it intends to embrace progress at any price.
President Donald Trump has stated that he’ll use an vitality emergency declaration to rapidly approve new energy stations for AI knowledge facilities, together with those who use coal for backup energy. Trump has additionally promised to fast-track environmental approvals and different permits for any firm investing of $1 billion or extra domestically.
