Did you know? The hardware systems created to use, train, and fine-tune Generative AI systems are so large that fans aren't used to cool the systems, water is used to cool them. Not just a couple drinking glass, or even a couple gallons of water. In 2022, Microsoft's data center used nearly 360 MILLION gallons of water. A statistic that is only continuing to grow and drain a valuable resource.
I certainly did not know about this mass of water usage until this year. A system using that much water is not going to exsist in a small or regular office space. This is where Data Centers come in- ginormous buildings meant for nothing but building and fine-tuning AI systems. These new centers have their own ethical problems.
(Data Centers have exsisted since the 1940s, the first being built at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, to assist in the growth of the first general purpose digital computer: the ENIAC)
Im additiom to water usage, electricty use is also insane. In 2021, scientists fron Berkeley (at the University of California) estimated the training process alone consumed 1,287 megawatt hours of electricity.
Thats enough to power about 120 average U.S. homes for a year!! It also generates about 522 tons of carbon dioxide!
An average ChatGPT query consumed about 5 times more electricity than a simple web search. One estimate suggests that for each kilowatt hour of energy a data center consumes, it would need 2 liters of water for cooling.
Data centers are being built in areas where water is already scarce, areas that predominantly use fossil fuels. This means gas-fired power pants sending more pollution into the atmosphere.
Could there be positive aspects to AI on environmental impact? Maybe. Maybe it could help us figure out solutions to environmental problems we already have. I'm not super optimistic though. In the meantime, we NEED to slow down on our blazing path to glory of creating this new system. There will be no point in the system if the world we live in isn't even inhabitable. We must hold our representatives responsible to hold corporations responsible to slow down and not poison our world.
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