AI's Impact On The Environment
Hello everyone why is this basically an essay.
I had to research this in social studies today. This is pretty useful information to know so pls read if you have the time.
I personally strongly dislike ai but I tried to keep this as informational as possible.
I read a lot of people's posts on here about how AI uses a lot of water. But I keep on talking about it with my brother and he keeps on saying "It's water you can't really run out it's WATER." which is a little silly but ok.
In case you didn't know, AI data centers use water to cool them down because they get ridiculously hot. Around 169 liters per second, which is 14.6 MILLION per day. To put that into some kind of perspective, an olympic swimming pool is 2.5 million L.
Now, the water that is used either gets put back into some kind of river or lake, or it evaporates. You might think "Well, what's wrong with that?" The water put back is warmer than it was, which is not all too great for the life living in those waterways. Evaporating is normal, yes, but it means the water isn't available to people for say, drinking and bathing. Yes, the water doesn't vanish from the face of the earth, but it isn't very accessible if it's a gas.
One of the things I watched in my social studies class was an interview with someone in Chile, which is experiencing a drought. The data centers there are definitely not helping, as they use up water that would be much more beneficial if it was directly used by people.
Data centers are very big (anywhere from 8,000 square meters to 80,000), and as such use a lot of materials such as different metals. To get these metals, they need to mine, to mine, you need space, to get space, you often need to get rid of trees. The computer chips also need to be replaced every 2-3 years or something like that.
Data centers also need a lot of electricity. There are many ways to get electricity, a lot of them not great for the environment. The documentary also had an interview with someone from Ireland, around 22% of Irelands electricity is used by data centers, that's only just below the amount used by all houses (around %24).
Yes, AI is really quite useful, I understand that. I do also think that a lot of those uses aren't particularly necessary. Either way, it's not worth the environmental impact. That's my opinion anyway.
TL;DR ai datacenters use SO MUCH water, energy, and materials. This is very harmful to the environment in quite a few different ways. The water used is either put back warmer, or evaporates, neither good. Electricity is sometimes/often (I don't know all too much about electricity) made unsustainably. Materials are almost always gathered in a way that destroys stuff like trees.
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