AI – WildernessPunk

When we speak of the dangers of Doom Scrolling it is usually involves the psychological damage to the individual and our culture. Some worry about the time and money which may be wasted binge watching streamed shows while nothing is accomplished other than increasing your waistline. Others speak out on the economic impact of services like Amazon who horde consumer spending profits while local businesses are destroyed,

However, all these things have a darker more hidden aspect which is rarely discussed and this is the use of Data Centers. It is hard to track the number of Data Centers in the US because Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and a few others do their best to keep the plants undiscovered. They rightly fear that if the truth was known about the real costs of these facilities even Americans might consider changing their habits.

All the You Tube videos, streamed movies, music, catalogs of endless products, and so many things we adore are all kept ‘live’ in these data centers. Most of us enjoy our online fun…but at what cost?

The cost we pay for these Data Centers is almost beyond human understanding. Just one small Data Center in Nebraska, for instance, uses the same energy in a year to provide electricity to 400,000 homes during the same period. The percentage of total energy use in the United States by Data Centers rose 9% in the last 10 years bringing it currently up to 12% of our nation’s total energy use. The introduction of AI is estimated to raise this energy need more than 10 times bringing from 7.5 Kilowatts per hour to 85 Kilo Watts per hour. So depending on how things could work out, we could be looking at the need to create 5 times as many Data Centers as we already have so they can drain 60% of the energy we currently produce within the United States. In other words, we’ll have to produce about 50% more than we currently do, just to support AI and Date Centers.

Such things as green energy we acquire from hydroelectric dams, solar, and wind farms become a side note and won’t even cover half of this requirement while leaving 100% of our normal energy requirements untouched. Things like solar panels on your own roof have zero effect on this energy burden. Yes, they power the electricity your television, Alexia use to run, and charge your cell, but that is just the smallest fraction of the energy these services require to bring you data from the cloud.

For example, things like printed books pay off their energy production requirement in the first ten minutes of reading an e-book. Depending on how fast you read, a six hundred page e-book costs the same amount of energy and resources to print 20 books which can be reread, shared, gifted, inherited, or resold.

If pollution or the effects of Climate Change matter to you, then you should keep in mind these centers currently emit 300,000 Kilograms of greenhouse gases and pollution an hour. Again, if the AI cost ups this by the estimated factor of 10 we are looking at 3,000,000 KG of pollution per hour or 26,280,000,000 KG a year. This makes any sad attempt we might try to lower Greenhouse gases laughable. How can we expect to lower anything when the introduction of AI will create over 26 Trillion KG of pollution which wasn’t even there 15 years ago and this is just centers in the US. Any benefits you created by taking public transportation to work are erased by streaming a two hour movie or scrolling 20 minutes on your cell.

The horror doesn’t end there. The real danger, the true threat to many of us, in our decade long drought ridden regions, is the amount of water these Data Centers require. Currently Data Centers use a million gallons of water daily or 1.83 billion gallons a year. If we assume the ten-fold increase AI could require we are looking at 18,300,000,000 gallons a year. Places like Los Vegas, Pheonix, and Tucson will become ghost towns as the water dries up, property values sink to pennies on the dollar, and a fifth on the country’s population becomes climate refugees.

If you think there is an economic gain for the communities allowing these Data Centers to come in rob them of their water, increasing their energy bills, while droning 24/7 loud enough to rattle windows, think again, for some states are giving them up to a billion dollars in tax exempt discounts while they only hire around 100 employees from the area.

What is the answer when conserving energy, water, and controlling pollution becomes useless? The world was barely concerned with Climate Change before and big tech drove a dagger through the heart of any attempt to keep it under control and AI requirements will finish the job.

Look, I get it. I’m still using the internet too. I am currently a big fan of You Tube, my kids stream shows, and I hate to say it, but I love listening to music on our Alexia, while I cook. You are reading this online article, I posted, on a screen and before you got to the end it undid any savings you created riding your bike to the grocery store or using an energy efficient dishwasher might have saved you.

So what is the answer, sell your Alexia, toss your cell phone into a river, and see if you can still find a blue ray for sale? I don’t think we have the ability or self control to do a lot of those things. However, keep in mind any use of AI is a stab through the environment’s heart. It isn’t cool, it’s criminal. All things done offline should be rewarded and admired. Do as little online as your sanity and employment will allow you to get away with. Lastly realize moving any practice that wasn’t online to online is not an advancement toward anything except ensuring our culture’s quickly approaching destruction.

Author’s note: I know I threw out a lot of facts and figures I gleaned from multiple sources and failed to reference them. I looking to do a deeper dive into the source material and perhaps produce a more detailed article on this subject in the near future which will include references.

Thank you, I’m off to prepare a Role Playing Game for my wife which will create a zero carbon footprint and requires no online assistance. Prepare yourself for you own future and…roll initiative.