Globe smashed in AI footprint

AI is literally eating our world.
I have to admit to using chatbots and AI for some recreational things including sharp money trends in major league baseball and some structural things, but I don’t really trust the information. I’m just looking for pathways.
I have discussions around AI and its value with my daughter, but she gets bristly with me because of the overall impact it has on the workforce and the environment. I thought she was overreacting, but I committed to finding out for myself.
AI is literally eating our world.
According to a report generated by the United Nations Environmental Programme, and you’re not going to believe this but the report is there for anyone to read, a single AI query can use as much as a full bottle of water. Let that sink in as you grab your water bottle.
Forbes published a report that said AI is “significantly increasing global water consumption”.
Fresh water, which is what we use for drinking, only represents about 3% of water on the planet. And about 70% of that is untouchable at the moment as frozen in glaciers, according to the Forbes article. With current water usage, just current water usage, by 2030 more than half the global population with encounter “severe water stress”.
And each AI search can consume close to 12 oz. of water! I had an editor who once told me I get seven exclamation points in my career. That’s worth using one of those because it has to sink in to everyone on this Sunday morning.
None of this takes into consideration the fabrication of microchip wafers that also require heavy water usage in that process, or the usage of water in hydroelectric energy production.
These big AI-leading companies are vowing to increase efforts to recycle and reintroduce water, but right now it’s a commitment and not an action that is balancing the supply with the demand.
They cannot be just commitments, it has to be quantified. But the genie is out of the bottle, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Tech companies are racing at full speed to stay in front of generative AI and everytime we use it to create a cartoon image of ourselves, as cute and funny as they are, we’re sucking life from the earth. I’m not a high-energy environmentalist, but I do enjoy being outdoors and I drink filtered water all day long. It’s also hard to quantify whether I have enough time left on earth to be compromised by water shortage. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point I’m adjusting my lifestyle because of it…I’m totally comfortable saying that. But I have a daughter who, God-willing, has a lot more time left on this earth than me. I have friends with kids and grandkids and those people do have time.
Let’s talk about electrical demand. Currently, and just pass over the pun there, AI demands consume about 6% of the electrical demand in the United States.
A report from the International Energy Agency, said an AI search through such pathways as ChatGPT require 10 times the energy consumption of a Google Search. That isn’t to give Google a feather in their cap as their searches require additional energy, as well, and the materials used in creating the data centers, capacitors, diodes and all that other stuff syphon raw earth resources, and then generate electronic waste like lead and mercury.
We’ve had that kind of electronic waste since Commodore built some of the first home-based computers so we can’t just pin it all on AI, but what we can say is the waste and consumption is now hyper-accelerated as everyone races to be the first at whatever it is that’s next.
That IEA report said there were 500,000 data centers across the globe in 2012. That number is now 8 million. This year, data centers in Ireland will consume 35% of that country’s energy – this year.
The US has developed a “voluntary” reporting system on the environmental impacts of AI generation efforts, as well as requiring the EPA to conduct a survey of those impacts nationwide. The European Union has taken similar steps.
Taking responsibility in limiting the impact is a tough row to hoe. It’s hard to turn a blind eye to tech that will create an advocacy statement in a matter of seconds and then allow you to fine tune it and tweak to fit exactly what you are trying to say. In the day of even Google searches that was, at a minimum, a couple days work in putting together a relative statement to what AI can generate in seconds.
But there has to be some vigilance. Instead of using AI to tell me where the wind is blowing out, I’ll just got to a weather site. Even that there has an environmental footprint, but it would seem we can manage that demand. I can look at databases on my own to see how well Elly De La Cruz hits left handers, on the east coast, at night, off a day’s rest. Its tough to ask the population to not punch that very request into ChatGPT and get the answer in moments.
But we have to start taking that responsibility and moving away from the easiest path. This is serious stuff and those who are experiencing “severe water stress” are typically those that probably aren’t using AI as much as the technologically-advanced populations. It’s not a stretch to think it will come to all of us sooner than we would like.
The World Resource Institute recently reported that a single modern AI data center can use as much power as 100,000 homes, and many of the larger ones now being built are expected to consume up to 20 times that amount. One study from the Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory found that data centers could represent up to 12% of all U.S. electricity consumption by 2028. Another analysis, by Grid Strategies, says that up to 90 gigawatts (GW) worth of data centers could come online by 2030. That’s about 9 times New York City’s peak summer demand joining the grid in less than five years.
All these stats and surveys and reports are accessible with just a little time on your laptop and doing that, again, has an environmental footprint.
Again, we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, or the genie back in the bottle, and it’s more than a little scary to think that this may be ‘unstoppable’. However, the analogy creeps in that - a few good people can change the world.
It’s the only thing that ever has.
And speaking of a few good people, Tim Gobble and his Paint-A-Thon volunteers for local businesses and industries rehabbed four more homes last week. Gobble has coordinated the effort for the past nine years and rehabbed more than 30 homes in Fort Madison. Talk about your footprints…but that’s Beside the Point.
Chuck Vandenberg is editor and co-owner of Pen City Current and can be reached at Charles.V@PenCityCurrent.com.