Story By: Gabriella Frohman
Generative AI has made its way into every one of our lives one way or another. From ChatGPT to Snapchat’s AI bot, generative AI surrounds us. AI is an easy to use tool that many take advantage of in a myriad of ways.
Most AI runs through data centers, which store and power in servers and other computing machines. Traditional data centers store things like the cloud, a server that keeps track of an individual's files and data so that it can be accessed through any device.
Traditional data centers are designed to use 5-10 KW per rack, which is 5,000-10,000 watts. AI data centers use anywhere from 5-10 times more power. This electricity generates a mass amount of heat, leading to around 40% of electricity used in these centers goes towards cooling systems.
The International Energy Agency estimates a request made to ChatGPT uses 10 times more electricity than a Google search. A Google sustainability report released this year revealed that their carbon emissions had a, “48% increase compared to (their) 2019 target base year—primarily due to increases in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions. “
Increased growth in collective carbon emissions will without a doubt affect the lives of every human being. In an estimation by the International Energy Agency, by 2025 global emissions from AI and Cryptocurrency could rise to 3.5% of the world's energy consumption. Currently that is equal to the consumption of Japan, the fifth largest electricity user.
Not only is AI damaging to the environment, but it can be taken advantage of in order to create pornographic content. Both celebrities and regular people can be bombarded by deep fakes and photoshopped images of themselves. Actress Jenna Ortega was forced to delete her Twitter account because of the multitude of AI porn of herself she was being sent, most images depicting her as a minor.
In January of this year, Twitter had to block the search for “Taylor Swift” on its platform as the site was being flooded with explicit AI images of the singer. The alarming uptick in misogynistic harassment doesn’t only affect people in the public eye. A 14 year old girl in the UK, Mia Janin, committed suicide in January after boys at her school photoshopped her face onto a porn model before sharing the images in a groupchat.
As young people become reliant on AI, they begin to decline in independent thinking skills. The reliance on AI to complete homework assignments and write essays has led to a lack of care and effort being put into academics.
Estimates put anywhere from 46%-49% of students using AI on assignments each week. Using AI to complete work does nothing for the development of the mind and learning experiences. This will lead to a decline in work ethic and problem solving skills in the next generation of people entering the workforce.
The responses that AI like ChatGPT puts out are collected from all over the internet with no fact checking. Algorithms analyze problems and probabilities, but lack actual critical thinking. The sources they pull from often have a bias that it cannot recognize. Often AI can rely too heavily on the input of whoever creates the algorithm or prompts it, leading to confirmation biases.
While AI can be weaponized to create harmful content and is often abused, there are some positive developments being made. Earlier this year it was discovered that AI can be trained to read mammograms and can predict breast cancer 4 years in advance. These are the kinds of developments and use of AI that will help the world to move forward, not backwards.
The use of artificial intelligence can propel the world into the future, so long as it is used responsibly and ethically. The general public gaining access to programming at a large scale has led to a spike in carbon emissions, heinous online harassment, and a decline in work ethic of students. The more people that are aware of the problem, the more they can do to help fix it. Cutting down on usage of AI images and exploitation of programs for academic purposes will lead to a better, safer, climate conscious world.
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