The Environmental Impacts of Artificial Intelligence Revealed in Google’s Report

MetaversePlanet July 5, 2024Last Updated: October 22, 2024

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Google has released its environmental report for the year, revealing the alarming environmental impacts of artificial intelligence.

The gradual spread of AI technologies worldwide has raised concerns about their environmental impacts, especially as the climate crisis worsens. The environmental report published yesterday by Google, one of the leading companies in artificial intelligence, addressed this issue.

Google had set a goal of zero emissions by 2030. However, its annual data showed that this goal is not being met. In fact, greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 48% since 2019. Last year, Google produced 14.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, a 13% annual increase. As expected, the main contributor to this rise was data centers, which are crucial for artificial intelligence.

Electricity consumption of data centers has increased significantly

Data centers are notoriously high in energy consumption, and those used to train AI are even worse. Data center electricity consumption was the single largest contributor to last year’s emissions, adding 1 million metric tons of pollution to the company’s 2023 carbon footprint.

Google is currently in the “Gemini” period, integrating artificial intelligence into everything from its search engine to all its other services. As a result, environmental impacts are increasing significantly. According to the report, the electricity consumption of Google’s data centers increased by 17% in 2023. The company expects this trend to continue, noting that its centers account for 10% of global data center consumption.

The tech giant has not forgotten its plans to minimize these impacts. Its goal is to make its AI models, hardware, and data centers more energy efficient. We will have to wait and see how it achieves this. Whether Google will reach its 2030 goals remains a matter of curiosity.