{"id":679,"date":"2025-07-22T09:08:50","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T16:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/?p=679"},"modified":"2025-07-22T09:10:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T16:10:14","slug":"environmental-impact-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/articles\/environmental-impact-of-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Impact of AI: Large But Not Significant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I know a lot of people are concerned about the environmental impact of AI, so I keep an eye out for detailed information about it. I came across two articles today (Slow Boring references Andy Masley):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.slowboring.com\/p\/theres-plenty-of-water-for-data-centers?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F53e031a5-84d5-4242-bda3-1f11116b7f95_1456x732.jpeg&amp;open=false\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Slow Boring: There&#8217;s plenty of water for data centers<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/andymasley.substack.com\/p\/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about?open=false#&#167;water\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Andy Masley: Why using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment<\/a>\u00a0(this is a very long summary of an even longer post &#8211; I have skimmed both of them)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Short version:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Water complaints from data center construction seem to be more about water quality issues from construction (e.g. well water sediment), which would be caused by constructing anything of that scale &#8211; distribution centers, warehouses, shopping centers, etc<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Water use is much less significant than energy use<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>AI computation uses much less water and energy than other data center uses e.g. Zoom, streaming video<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Water use by AI is vanishingly small compared to things like raising cattle or leaking pipes<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>ChatGPT queries just don&#8217;t add up to much compared to everyday energy usage tasks (e.g. 1 query = vacuum cleaner for 10 seconds, use laptop for 3 minutes) or water consumption (200,000 queries = one hamburger)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>My take is that while AI energy usage will be a significant new industrial consumer, it&#8217;s not significant in either water or energy usage compared to other uses, and the impacts on capital and labor markets will be orders of magnitude more impactful than environmental impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know a lot of people are concerned about the environmental impact of AI, so I keep an eye out for detailed information about it. I came across two articles today (Slow Boring references Andy Masley): Short version: My take is that while AI energy usage will be a significant new industrial consumer, it&#8217;s not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[22,27,28,25],"class_list":{"0":"post-679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ai","7":"tag-ai","8":"tag-chatgpt","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-openai","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pazgP-aX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}