The environmental impacts of artificial intelligence

January 8, 2025

The age of robots has finally arrived. With 82% of companies using AI to boost productivity and increase efficiency, have you considered the impacts of AI on the environment?

Myself included, roughly three quarters of students globally have admitted to using AI chat bots like ChatGPT in order to complete work or simply to test its power. Though despite the satisfaction from these instantaneous responses, the consequences to our surroundings are long-lasting.

Every time you message ChatGPT, 4 grams of CO2 are emitted into the atmosphere as a result of the 30,000 GPUs (graphics processing units) operating constantly in order to keep the servers online. To make matters all the more concerning, it has an estimated 123.5 million users per day. That is 494 billion grams of CO2 released from just ChatGPT alone.

To visualise that nauseating figure, that is equal to 2,090 average trips out in the car.

Often we aren’t even asking the chatbots necessary questions. Instead we ask the robot ridiculously innocent questions such as:

“How are you? :)”

We obviously know that the robot does not have human feelings, but with the joyous and often human-like responses so quickly available many people simply enjoy testing the capabilities of AI. They are impressive!

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Instead of ChatGPT you could use:

Educational Sites - Like BBC Bitesize which is a home to a wealth of reliable knowledge.

Documentaries - Engage in an in-depth exploration of a topic through varied experiences on sites such as BBC Iplayer.

Digital Libraries - Can’t get there in person? sites like Open Library offer a range of resources.

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However, if you choose to use AI or ChatGPT again consider dropping the playful introduction and visualising the impacts that those responses will have on the world around us all.

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