Artificial intelligence has a high environmental cost with the data centers which make them function using huge amounts of power and water for their cooling systems as well as producing large amounts of electronic waste VIDEOGRAPHIC
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00:00Generative artificial intelligence has a high environmental cost.
00:10The data centers which make artificial intelligence work are very energy intensive.
00:15By 2030 they are expected to make up 3% of world consumption,
00:20equivalent to the annual consumption of France or Germany.
00:23To ask ChatGPT a question requires 10 times more energy
00:28than asking a search engine like Google.
00:31Through its electricity consumption,
00:33artificial intelligence emits carbon dioxide.
00:36The training of a large language model
00:38generates between 200 to 300 tons of carbon dioxide,
00:42the equivalent of 250 flights between New York and Beijing.
00:46The air conditioners required to cool data centers
00:49consume billions of cubic meters of water.
00:52AI servers produce thousands of tons of electronic waste
00:56and their manufacture requires rare earth metals
01:00whose extraction is another source of pollution.