Environment & Sustainability

The training and inference stages of AI models are among the most energy-intensive processes in the AI lifecycle. Current hardware architectures, including GPUs and TPUs, struggle to meet the computational demands of increasingly complex models like GPT-3,

A recent commentary article by researchers from Northwestern University, Harvard University, and The University of Texas at San Antonio highlights the significant but overlooked environmental and social impacts of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI).

You might think that my work is self-contradictory. As Professor of Data Science for Sustainability and the Environment at Queen Mary University of London, I use artificial intelligence (AI) to address environment-related challenges.

Optimistic advocates for AI say this environmentally costly technology will become more sustainable with time. We can use AI more efficiently, and explore less energy-intensive designs inspired by the human brain.

With the increasing shift to AI and increased industrialization globally, energy and water demands are growing significantly. An article from Morgan Stanley mentions that "power demand from generative AI will increase at an annual average of 70% through 2027, mainly from the growth of data centers."

Sustainability Economics is an international organization headquartered in Singapore and the United States, with a major development center in Bangalore. The company provides end-to-end net-zero solutions for global businesses across high-emitting sectors.

A study by the Unites Nations Institute for Training and Research or UNITAR suggests that the world saw a total of around 62 million tons of e-waste produced in 2022, and that this number might increase by another 20 million tons by 2030. Discarded smartphones, the agency notes, constitute a significant portion of this waste.

The environmental costs of using artificial intelligence tools is an area of growing concern for government technology officials. Transparency from vendors can shed light on their energy and water usage.