Sarah Hiller

OPINION: We need to stop dismissing the environmental impact of AI

You have probably used artificial intelligence today without realizing it. Not Googling a question and reading the Gemini response, or even opening up ChatGPT, within the regular apps you open every morning. Spotify deciding what song plays next. Google Maps rerouting you around traffic. Instagram choosing which post you see first. None of that feels blatantly like artificial intelligence, but it is, and it is constantly running. Data centers around the world are burning through electricity and water at an unsustainable rate.