As the growth and rampant development of AI increases, many look forward to its numerous benefits. These benefits include faster and more accurate input as well as increased efficiency and data analysis.
These AI tools from companies such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft have become habitually used by Costa students. AI has beneficial uses such as predicting the rate of climate change and or other global issues when used by scientists. However, it also has a massive carbon footprint due to its large consumption of energy which continues to grow because of AI’s heavy demand.
The reason why AI consumes so much energy is because of its computational power. Not only does AI require electricity, but also water which is used to cool the hardware used for the assembly and usage of the AI models which strips the resources of local ecosystems.
Students at Costa have been taking advantage of AI and either using it for school work or as a study tool. Most of these students are unaware of the negative environmental impacts these actions have.
In an MIT article about AI usage,Norman Bashir, a computer and climate advisor states, “The demand for the new data centers cannot be met in a sustainable way. The pace at which companies are building new data centers means the bulk of the electricity to power them must come from fossil fuel based power plants.”
This begs the question: Are our planet and future generations the priority right now? Resources in this day and age are being misused, and many fear the emergence of AI will destroy the environment for future generations.
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