The AI boom has caused a huge surge in energy consumption, so how is the tech industry thinking about its environmental footprint as it invests in new AI models? Emily Kwong, host and reporter for NPR's Short Wave podcast, finds out what solutions are being considered that might meet both consumer demand and address climate concerns.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [email protected] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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In 2018, Sasha Luciani started a new job, AI researcher for Morgan Stanley. She was excited to learn something new in the field of AI, but she couldn't shake this worry.
I essentially was getting more and more climate anxiety. I was really feeling this profound disconnect between my job and my values and the things that I cared about. And so essentially I was like, oh, I should quit my job and go plant trees. I should do something that's really making a difference in the world.
then my partner was like, well, you have a PhD in AI, maybe you can use that to make a difference in the world.
So Luciani quit her job and joined a growing movement to make AI more sustainable. Since 2022, AI has boomed and it's caused a surge in energy consumption. Tech companies are racing to build data centers to keep up these huge buildings filled with hundreds of thousands of computers that require a lot of energy.
By 2028, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory forecasts the data centers could consume as much as 12 percent of the nation's electricity. And AI is also leading a surge in water consumption. It's a concern echoed all over social media.
The amount of water that AI uses is astonishing. AI needs water.
People are saying that every time you use ChatGPT, ChatGPT uses this much water for a hundred word email.
Where will that water come from? And the four big data center operators with a growing water and carbon footprint are Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta. And to be clear, all four of those are among NPR's financial supporters and pay to distribute some of our content.
Before generative AI came along in late 2022, there was hope among these data center operators that they could go to net zero.
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