ITEM

Generative AI's environmental costs are soaring - and mostly secret Item Info

Title:
Generative AI's environmental costs are soaring - and mostly secret
Creator:
Crawford, K.
Date Created:
2024-02-20
Description:
Describes a potential US-bill that would address the environmental costs of technology
Subjects:
generative AI sustainability environment
Resource URL:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x
Annotation:
In my role I do a lot of advocacy for environmental sustainability in the library. I think we often have this magical thinking that things that happen on the Internet exist in some nebulous non-physical space, and fail to think about the real-life environmental impacts of things like the massive computing power used for AI (and water, land use for servers, fossil fuel, etc). I'm not adverse to AI, but we need to ask "is it worth it" when we consider how it is being used, because the easy and free downloadable app doesn't tell the whole story.
Submitter:
Whitson, Johanna
Added:
24-May
Source
Preferred Citation:
"Generative AI's environmental costs are soaring - and mostly secret", AI.LD,
Reference Link:
https://elibtronic.github.io/AIL_Database/items/ail_042.html