Letters: AI environmentally destructive - Coast Reporter
In response to your question “what do we do about AI,” I suggest strictly regulating it and asking more questions about it. How is it produced? Who profits from it? Who suffers because of it? Meta, Microsoft, Musk, Open AI, Google and Amazon are expanding AI infrastructure dramatically.
The MIT Technology Review suggests each data centre needs 5 GW, more than the total power demand of the State of New Hampshire. Currently, AI data centers cannot use intermittent renewable energy.
Alarmingly, the equipment needs exorbitant amounts of water for cooling the equipment, most of which is fresh and potable. Forbes estimates that a single ChatGPT conversation uses half a litre of water and projects that AI data centers will use 6.6 billion cubic meters by 2027.
Environmental Impact of AI Data Centers
There are six AI data centres planned in B.C. Where is the water coming from and how much will it use? Is this why Premier Eby wants Bill 15 so we can circumvent environmental regulations and Indigenous consultation? Is this why federal Liberals and Conservatives want to similarly “fast track” national projects to increase energy production and become an energy “superpower”? Or to be able to mine for the critical minerals necessary for computing technology without onerous and time-consuming environmental assessments? Fossil fuel extraction, nuclear power and mining themselves use vast amounts of water.
I don’t buy the claim that AI will solve its own problems and save us. It’s not just a brain, it has a body and the needs to feed it are inherently ecologically destructive. Does everyone need AI? Chat GPT claims that it receives 78 million image requests a day for an image of the user as a cartoon or a Barbie. Is this worth the air we breathe and the water we drink?
