SvennoJ said:
CaptainExplosion said:
Well I wanna see all generative AI servers crash. They're putting human artists, writers and voice actors in economic turmoil. |
As well as turning up the heat even more
https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
Scientists have estimated that the power requirements of data centers in North America increased from 2,688 megawatts at the end of 2022 to 5,341 megawatts at the end of 2023, partly driven by the demands of generative AI. Globally, the electricity consumption of data centers rose to 460 terawatts in 2022. This would have made data centers the 11th largest electricity consumer in the world, between the nations of Saudi Arabia (371 terawatts) and France (463 terawatts), according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. By 2026, the electricity consumption of data centers is expected to approach 1,050 terawatts (which would bump data centers up to fifth place on the global list, between Japan and Russia).
While electricity demands of data centers may be getting the most attention in research literature, the amount of water consumed by these facilities has environmental impacts, as well. Chilled water is used to cool a data center by absorbing heat from computing equipment. It has been estimated that, for each kilowatt hour of energy a data center consumes, it would need two liters of water for cooling, says Bashir.
There are also environmental implications of obtaining the raw materials used to fabricate GPUs, which can involve dirty mining procedures and the use of toxic chemicals for processing.
Market research firm Tech Insights estimates that the three major producers (NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel) shipped 3.85 million GPUs to data centers in 2023, up from about 2.67 million in 2022. That number is expected to have increased by an even greater percentage in 2024.
But hey, maybe AI will be able to predict the next flood/tornado/hurricane/drought more accurately...
We're really good at finding ways to destroy our lifehood just in the hopes of making it better.
But oh well, these corpos aren't about sustainability because chasing that dollar is simply the name of their game ... | 
