Discussion | Exploring the Environmental Costs of AI
Join IPK for a discussion on the environmental costs of AI on November 21 at 5:30 PM, featuring Benedetta Brevini, Nicole Starosielski, Sanjana Paul, and Tamara Kneese. This event will be hybrid and the Zoom code will be sent out the day before the event.
During the week of the much-anticipated Climate Summit (COP 29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, a panel of experts will discuss AI environmental impact above and beyond data centers’ water and energy footprints. Public discourse surrounding the harms of artificial intelligence has often been dominated by exaggerated, science fiction-like worlds where chatbots gain sentience, while artificial general intelligence threatens the human species. However, in the last six months, the public conversation on the harms of AI has shifted dramatically to include, for the first time, the environmental costs of AI. This shift is a result of the unprecedented increase in energy and water consumption driven by the rise of generative AI, making it nearly impossible for the industry to continue avoiding discussing this draconian problem. Following the launch of generative AI services in 2022, both Microsoft and Google reported significant increases: Google’s data centers consumed 20% more water in 2022 compared to 2021, while Microsoft’s water usage jumped by 34% during the same time frame. Goldman Sachs predicts that Data centers will use 8% of US energy by 2030, compared with 3% in 2022. Yet, the story of AI’s environmental costs extends far beyond the energy and water consumption of the data centers that support it. In order to understand holistically the complexities of the environmental harms of AI, it is crucial to consider all segments of the extractive production chain of AI , exploring the “Eco-Political Economy of AI”.
Benedetta Brevini is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge and Associate Professor of political economy of communication at the University of Sydney and Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She writes on The Guardian’s Comment is Free and contributes to a number of print and web publications including South China Morning Post, OpenDemocracy and the Conversation. She is the author of several books. Her volume “Is AI good for the Planet ? “(2021) has been named best science book of the week by Nature. Her other books are News Corp: Empire of Influence (2024), Amazon, Understanding a Global Communication Giant (2020), Public Service Broadcasting online (2013), Beyond Wikileaks (2013), Carbon Capitalism and Communication: Confronting Climate Crisis (2017), Climate Change and the Media (2018). She is currently working on a new book project on Communication, Data Capitalism and the Climate Emergency for Polity, NY.
Nicole Starosielski, Professor of Film and Media at the University of California-Berkeley, conducts research on global internet infrastructure, with a focus on the subsea cables that carry almost 100% of transoceanic internet traffic. Starosielski is author or co-editor of over thirty articles and five books on media, infrastructure, and environments, including: The Undersea Network (2015). Starosielski’s most recent project, Sustainable Subsea Networks (https://www.sustainablesubseanetworks.com/), is working to enhance the sustainability of subsea cable infrastructures. The project has developed a catalog of best practices for sustainability in the subsea cable industry and a carbon footprint of a subsea cable. Starosielski is also a co-convenor of the SubOptic Association’s Global Citizen Working Group.
Sanjana Paul is the co-founder and executive director of Earth Hacks, an environmental hackathon organization, and is currently a graduate student in environmental policy and planning at MIT. She holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and physics and has worked on projects ranging from atmospheric science software engineering to passing building decarbonization policy at the municipal level.
Tamara Kneese is a Senior Researcher and Project Director of Data & Society’s Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab. Before joining D&S, she was Lead Researcher at Green Software Foundation, Director of Developer Engagement on the Green Software team at Intel, and Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Director of Gender and Sexualities Studies at the University of San Francisco. Tamara holds a PhD in Media, Culture and Communication from NYU and is the author of Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond (Yale University Press, 2023).
Image Credit: Easy-Peasy.AI