The Growing Health Hazard of Energy-Consuming AI

Data centers could contribute to an estimated 600,000 asthma cases and 1,300 premature deaths per year by 2030 as data centers consume even more energy to meet the intensive computing needs of artificial intelligence. It accounts for more than one-third of annual asthma deaths in the United States.

“Public health impacts are direct and tangible impacts on people, and these impacts are significant and not limited to the narrow areas in which data centers operate.” Ren Xiaolei At the University of California, Riverside. “They affect people all over the country.”

Including Len and his colleagues Adam Wierman Caltech researchers based these estimates on data centers' projected power demands, which generate additional emissions and contribute to air pollution. Researchers say, for example, the electricity usage required to train a large-scale AI model can generate air pollutants equivalent to more than 10,000 round trips in a passenger car between Los Angeles and New York City. It is said that there is a sex.

To model the effects of these air pollution and emissions, researchers tool Provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They estimated that nationally, total public health costs for data centers could exceed $20 billion by 2030. This is about twice the public health burden of the U.S. steel industry and could rival the health effects of exhaust fumes from tens of millions of cars in the largest countries. US states such as California.

Energy-intensive computing centers are already impacting public health. Researchers found that gas generators used as backup power for a facility in Virginia's Data Center Alley already caused 14,000 asthma symptoms per year, with generator emissions of just 10% per year. We estimate that it could impose public health costs of $220 million to $300 million. Cents at the level permitted by state authorities. At the maximum allowable level, total public health costs could increase tenfold, estimated at $2 billion or $3 billion annually. These problems not only affect local residents, but also people in states as far away as Florida.

“Technology company [that operate] Data centers largely fail to include air pollutant standards in their sustainability reports, despite clear public health impacts, and data centers must self-regulate what they should report. cannot be determined. ” julie bolthouse at the Piedmont Environmental Council, a Virginia nonprofit.

Some high-tech companies rushing to build data centers are supporting low-emission energy sources, funding the construction of renewable energy projects, and investing in both conventional nuclear power plants and new reactor technology. There are some places where there are. But for now, many data centers still rely heavily on fossil fuel electricity such as natural gas, and previous research has predicted that by 2030, data centers will be roughly equivalent to one state in the United States and another in California. It has been suggested that this could increase gas demand.

“The questions about the impact of artificial intelligence and data center computing on health are important,” he says. benjamin lee at the University of Pennsylvania. He called the paper “the first to estimate and quantify these costs in dollar terms,” ​​but the underlying approximations and assumptions behind the specific numbers remain to be determined by additional research. He also warned that it needed to be verified.