AI increases energy consumption: how it affects air pollution and our health

Joint research of two American universities – of the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, deduced the pattern that the growing energy consumption of AI is involved in air pollution, which causes health problems. It is precisely because of the spread of AI that in four years we should expect 600,000 cases of asthma, as well as a jump in other diseases. On a financial level, supercomputers serving neural networks will force the American budget to spend 20 billion dollars a year on health care.

What you should know

The whole point is that the more data centers dedicated exclusively to AI work, the more sources of electricity generation are needed, as well as electricity itself for the operation of such data centers. This generates an increase in harmful emissions, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which are quite dangerous for the human body.

And according to the same data, the harmful change in the Earth's atmosphere from AI by 2030 will be equivalent to the emissions of 35 million cars. units, thereby leaving behind such completely non-ecological production as steel and iron smelting.

It also turned out that data centers pose a danger as areas near which fires occur – the phenomenon is quite frequent. So the best thing to do right now with the AI ​​problem, – is to organize compensation payments to residents near the data center and to think as soon as possible about the emergence of “green order” technologies designed to reduce the extra-dangerous impact of working conflicts related to artificial intelligence.