Coupled with all the other problems of AI, do we really want it?
And then there’s the water use.
Data centers need water, and lots of it, to cool their servers.
Earth at Night From Space.NASA / Unsplash
And it’s only going to get worse.
The obvious question is whether this is all worth it.
What Is It Good For?
Data Center Server Room.Andrey Semenov / Getty Images
… to ignore the consequences of this situation means to ignore the perspective of sustainability.
Chronically incorrect chatbots that lie to us?
Image-generation software that still can’t draw hands anduses millions of artists' work without their knowledgeor permission?
The ability for your phone to identify the flower in front of you as a sunflower?
Or is it a daisy?
And what about therecent launch of AI-generated video, which will require even more computing resources?
Imagine that any other field of technology offered the same tradeoffs.
AI remains a novelty for users, at best.
Meanwhile, the social and political consequences of AI deep-fakes are obvious and probably disastrous.
And yet we’re sitting and watching it happen.
“Human beings extract from the environment more and more energy than is needed to survive and multiply.”
Right now, it seems that the only beneficiaries of AI are AI companies.
