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With Los Angeles still facing the threat of wildfires, social media has been flooded with posts blaming them on ChatGPT. While this accusation is inaccurate, it’s not unfounded, and the devastation in California should give anyone who uses generative AI pause.
The ferocity of the wildfires is a result of climate change, as is the water scarcity that resulted in dry hydrants and compounded the damage. Both of these things are potentially being made worse by AI, and the more people use it, the more rapidly it will cause harm.
The True Cost of AI
Everything we do online requires energy that's largely supplied by environmentally unfriendly fossil fuels. According to a Goldman Sachs report on data center power, a Google search consumes 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, while one ChatGPT search consumes 2.9 watt-hours.
Meanwhile, the data centers emitting all of this carbon dioxide into the air require a huge amount of water to keep the machines inside cool. Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside, found that one email written by ChatGPT uses 17 ounces of water. Now apply that to all the mundane and ridiculous reasons why people use ChatGPT and other AI chatbots on a daily basis.
Last year, Microsoft and Google reported a huge spike in emissions. In 2023, Microsoft's emissions went up 29%, and it used 23% more water, primarily due to "new technologies, including generative AI." Google said its greenhouse gas emissions surged 48% in the past five years thanks to the expansion of data centers that power its AI tools.
I am not usually one to assign responsibility for climate change to individuals, but the magnitude of literal power that we wield with AI and the consequences of our actions are too great to ignore.
Resisting AI
AI is being built into every aspect of our lives, from phones and computers to TVs and even fridges. Microsoft envisions AI agents taking on responsibilities across the workplace.
Tech companies have placed big bets on dubious technology in the past decade—crypto, NFTs, the metaverse—but AI is their priciest bet to date. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pitching his AI in America plan and looking for $7 trillion in funding. Microsoft says it plans to spend $80 billion on AI data centers this year. Meta has planned for $38 billion.
But just because these companies spend big on AI doesn't mean we have to buy in. You can turn off Apple Intelligence on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac (Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri and toggle it off). You can also get rid of Google's AI Overviews on search and disable Copilot in Windows. And you can definitely stop yourself from turning to ChatGPT so much.
AI is marketed as a timesaver, but our time is not worth saving if we have nowhere left to enjoy it.