On Friday, October 17, the Environmental Awareness Club (EAC) held a meeting in Oscar Toro’s classroom to teach students about how artificial intelligence is affecting the environment.

Members of the EAC explained that large AI companies such as Apple and Microsoft are consuming tons of water and minerals, as well as straining power grids and water resources. They are also producing electronic waste that harms the environment even more. “AI centers are becoming the largest consumers of energy, which is also increasing global warming,” Toro said. “Since global warming will affect all of our daily lives, we need to know what we can do to help reduce the negative impacts of AI on the environment.”

Recent data helps show the size of this problem. The EAC explained that a typical large data center can consume as much electricity as a small city, with global data centers accounting for 1-3% of the world’s total electricity use. Beyond energy, the cooling systems needed to prevent AI servers from overheating require massive volumes of fresh water.

AI has also been responsible for many CO2 emissions. “It uses a lot of power, and a lot of power that we use is produced by burning fossil fuels,” Kiran Goel said. “Burning fossil fuels then goes up into the environment and causes global warming, and global warming causes a lot of severe weather.”

The EAC kids also explained ways we can use AI more responsibly or even to find new ways to get information without harming the environment. “I think it could definitely be used as a tool for things such as healthcare but we just need to find better sources of energy to actually power it so that it would be more sustainable,” said Goel. She feels that AI can definitely be a useful tool if people use it for the right reasons. “I really hope to see people be more mindful about the usage of AI and wanting to learn more and finding different ways that they can search or even go to a library and get information there.”