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Although AI is extremely helpful, the problems that come from AI outweigh the benefits that come from AI, making it environmentally hazardous and should be regulated in a way to factor in the environmental damages and maintenance costs.

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Section: Benefits when using AI to monitor the environment and using the wide potential of AI to battle climate change.

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Section: Benefits when using AI to monitor the environment and using the wide potential of AI to battle climate change.

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AI is a very powerful tool growing at a "breakneck pace" as mentioned in the article. AI is skilled at analyzing patterns and data such as the anomalies and similarities to predict outcomes. This makes AI very useful in monitoring the environment to observe and tell us how we can be environmentally efficient for many current processes such as methane detection.

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Monitoring

Detection

Patterns

Prediction

Outcomes

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Section: Why is AI so bad for the environment?

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Section: Why is AI so bad for the environment?

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AI is mainly bad for the environment due to it's high maintenance costs and the amount of pollution that results from using such a powerful tool.

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Section: How can we, as the world, support the regulation of AI?

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Section: How can we, as the world, support the regulation of AI?

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The UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) have suggested five things to combat the damages done by AI.

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The quote, "invaluable for monitoring the environment, and helping governments, businesses and individuals make more planet-friendly choices", shows how the author feels about the potential of AI. This quote describes how we can use AI in a beneficial way to counter global warming and fight climate change.

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AI has an environmental problem. Here’s what the world can do about that.

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The sprawling data centres that house AI servers churn out toxic electronic waste and are voracious consumers of electricity, which in most places is still produced from fossil fuels.

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AI is bad for the environment due to its large maintenance and creation costs.

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For example, to make a 2 Kg computer would require 800 Kg of raw material which aren't easy to obtain and harms the planet when we harvest it. This is shown in the text "The electronics they house rely on a staggering amount of grist: making a 2 kg computer requires 800 kg of raw material".

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The second major problem is the effect of making AI, such as the electronic wastes that come with the usage of AI.

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The electronic waste that come from AI include spreading extremely hazardous elements such as mercury and lead. The text tells us "The second problem is that data centres produce electronic waste, which often contains hazardous substances, like mercury and lead."

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Keeping the AI up is also no cheap nor easy task. It requires an extremely large amount of water to keep it running.

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In order to keep AI running it would have to consume 6 times the amount of water compared to Denmark, with a population of 6 million. In the text it claims "AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of 6 million"

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The energy required to run AI is an absurd amount, where it requires ten times the amount of electricity when compared to a simple google search. We get this energy through burning fossil fuels which has an extreme negative impact on our planet's health.

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"The rise of AI could see data centers could account for nearly 35% of the country's energy usage by 2026." This quote is informing us about the energy costs of running AI in Ireland.

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Maintenance

Cost

Waste

Pollution

Fossil Fuel

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Section: How is humanity coming to fight this?

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Section: How is humanity coming to fight this?

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We aren't just letting AI slowly destroy our planet. More than 190 countries have come together to put regulations on AI usage. Unfortunately the government often fail to account for the negative environmental impacts that come from using AI with them being "few and far between".

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The text says “Governments are racing to develop national AI strategies but rarely do they take the environment and sustainability into account. The lack of environmental guardrails is no less dangerous than the lack of other AI-related safeguards.” This quote highlights that, even if we are trying to regulate the use of AI, we fail to bring to light the negative environmental impacts it has on our planet.

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Regulation

Negative

Guardrails

Lack-of

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Section: What are some indirect effects of AI, if we continue to use AI?

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Section: What are some indirect effects of AI, if we continue to use AI?

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The text tells us a lot about the indirect causes, such as if humanity progresses towards self driving cars, this would cause people to drive more. This causes the gas usage to skyrocket and further critically damages our, already sick, planet. These are referred to as "higher order effects", which aren't as obvious if AI is used to downplay the effects that come from it's usage.

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"the development of AI-powered self-driving cars could cause more people to drive instead of cycling or taking public transit, pushing up greenhouse gas emissions. Then there are what experts call higher-order effects." This evidence from the text shows the future effects and how these experts are thinking ahead to observe how AI would negatively affect us.

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Higher-Order effects

Misinformation

Downplay

Consequences

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The UNEP recommends that the countries who use AI should impose standardized regulations as to measuring AI effects on the Environment.

"Firstly, countries can establish standardized procedures for measuring the environmental impact of AI; right now, there’s a dearth of reliable information on the subject."

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Secondly, The UNEP, with support from governments, will have access to the reports of direct environmental consequences of AI products and services.

" Secondly, with support from UNEP, governments can develop regulations that require companies to disclose the direct environmental consequences of AI-based products and services."

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Third, we can target the AI algorithm itself and make it more environmentally efficient and friendly, making it take less resources to maintain such as reusing components and recycling water.

"Thirdly, tech companies can make AI algorithms more efficient, reducing their demand for energy, while recycling water and reusing components where feasible."

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Recycle

Efficiency

Environmentally friendly

consequences

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Fourth, the UNEP has suggested that the major AI corporations "green" their databases and use recyclable energy instead of fossil fuels, and causing less harm on the planet itself.

"Fourthly, countries can encourage companies to green their data centres, including by using renewable energy and offsetting their carbon emissions."

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Finally, the countries that impose these regulations can slowly incorporate them into other factors that also have a similar negative effect on the planet, to further prevent environmental damage.

"Finally, countries can weave their AI-related policies into their broader environmental regulations."

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One connection we can see when we compare it to another article called "Now the humanities can disrupt AI" by Goodlad and Baker is how AI has a negative effect on humans. These articles highlight the flaws of AI when we see, in the article by Goodlad and Baker, "today’s “AI” discourse conflating predictive analytics with “intelligence” and massive datasets with “knowledge” and “experience” are primarily the result of marketing hype, technological obscurantism, and public ignorance." This connection between these two articles is significant because it comes to show how ignorance can lead to negative effects on human minds and the planet. In this article, we see that AI could be used to spread misinformation, which is also highlighted in the other text, to downplay the effects of AI, similar to ignorance.

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Another connection we can see is to the article from the New York Times called "A.L.S. Stole His Voice. A.I. Retrieved It." This article has a connection to this one because of the way it utilizes AI in a beneficial way to help humanity. In that article, it says, "A device that just years ago “seemed like science fiction,” he said, is now “improving, getting optimized, so quickly.” This quote shows how they used AI to help someone, with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, speak again. In a similar way, this article shows how we can use AI to reduce global warming and climate change by monitoring the methane emissions for certain processes to reduce the global negative impact. This article also tells us that AI can be used to monitor wildlife and detect changes and anomalies in current ecosystems to fight extinction and support biodiversity.

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Something so big and advanced as AI, if done right, should have already come with many restrictions and regulations on usage and production. This idea may imply that there is a form of neglect in the background of these large corporations when they're focusing on profits and monetary value instead of global protection and pollution prevention. This shows that the major companies are so blindsided by the benefits, they refuse to take the negative environmental impact into account.

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AI has an invisible cost not many people are aware of. The author could have implied that when someone uses AI to finish an assignment or obtain information, they also get hit with a invisible bill paid by the earth. This convenience and power that comes from using AI also comes with a large maintenance and energy bill required to power that search. This shows where the "costs" of AI come from and how we are directly contributing to the destruction of this planet without noticing it.