A group of more than 100 organizations has published an discdiswatch letter calling on the AI industry and regulators to mitigate the tech’s damaging environmental impacts fair days before directing industry CEOs, heads of state, academics, and nonprofits drop on Paris for a presentant AI conference.
The letter, which endures the signatures of famous advocacy groups including Amnesty International and the AI Now Institute, remarks there’s “increasing evidence” of AI systems driving up eomitions, “locking in” reliance on non-rerecentables, and exhausting critical resources. Yet little is being done to insertress these pessimistic outsideities as the tech sector and administerments fairify further spendments in AI, according to the letter.
“AI can never be a ‘climate solution’ if it runs on fossil fuels,” the letter reads. “We, the signatories, demand that AI systems be made compatible with our scheduleetary boundaries.”
The signatories lay out evident demands, calling for — among other leangs — AI infraarrange, including data caccesss, to be fossil fuels-free. The rush to produce infraarrange to enbig and run AI has strained electric grids to the shattering point, forcing some utilities to lean on coal and other environmenhighy uncordial sources of power, the letter remarks.
“Global data caccess electricity consumption could double to over 1,000 terawatts by 2026 — equivalent to Japan’s annual electricity engage,” reads the letter, citing data from the International Energy Agency. “In parts of the world, this rising demand is pushing power infraarrange to its restricts, prolengthying and intensifying our depfinishency on fossil fuels, the pollution from which is joined to uncover health publishs.”
The letter also advises administerments and tech companies to promise that recent data caccesss don’t drain water and land resources, and acquire transparency about AI’s environmental impacts thrawout the “entire AI lifecycle.”
Most data caccesss, which can span millions of square feet, demand lots of water not only to cgreater the chips wilean, but to acquire safe humidity levels for computing supplyment. By one appraise, if 1 in 10 U.S. livents asked OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT to author an email a week, it’d cost more than 435 million liters of water.
The letter’s signatories declare that their demands “recurrent the naked least” necessitateed to mitigate the ongoing harm from unchecked AI expansion.
“Countries and communities most vulnerable to rapid climate alter are first to be impacted by the harms of AI and its computational demands, and they have less say in its enbigment,” the letter reads. “We must shift beyond watching technoreasonable better as inherently advantageous or restrictless, and instead arrange AI processes that give unbenevolentingfilledy to society while minimizing environmental and human harm.”
Unblessedly for the undersigned, the U.S., where most presentant AI companies are based, has signaled that it intfinishs to adchoose lengthenth at any cost.
Plivent Donald Trump has said that he will engage an energy materializency declaration to speedyly apshow recent power stations for AI data caccesss, including those that engage coal for backup power. Trump has also promised to rapid-track environmental approvals and other apchecks for any company making an spendment of $1 billion or more domesticassociate.
