By: Alyssa Ramirez
The new and most popular AI ( artificial intelligence) tool in the world is ChatGPT. I’m sure the majority of us have heard of ChatGPT and use it on a daily basis. ChatGPT is used globally to the point where it has affected our environment significantly and decreased independent thinking abilities.
It is used to cheat on academic tests and assignments. It is used to create unoriginal writing, text messages, and more. Overall, it is used to do half of our thinking in our daily lives. Making us reliant on it to solve our problems and causing us to be unwilling to put in work for intellectual growth. I believe ChatGPT’s operations should be limited. Not only for people’s intellectual growth, but most importantly for our environment.
Are you aware of the effect it has on our environment? There are two major effects that I believe we should be most concerned about. And that is ChatGPT’s carbon dioxide emissions and its large water usage.
According to The Environmental Impact of ChatGPT: A Call for Sustainable Practices In AI Development, it states, “ According to estimates, ChatGPT emits 8.4 tons of carbon dioxide per year, more than twice the amount that is emitted by an individual, which is 4 tons per year.”
High carbon dioxide emissions are harmful to the environment because it escalates the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is when Earth’s gases (carbon dioxide) act like a blanket absorbing heat to keep our planet warm enough for life to thrive. But high emissions of CO2 trap the sun’s heat excessively, which ultimately causes global warming.
Global warming can have many causes, but carbon dioxide pollution can especially be the cause of extreme weather, climate change, decline in seawater pH, air quality, sea level rise, and melting ice. It is evident that high carbon dioxide emissions lead to imbalances in our environment. Additionally, ChatGPT Energy Consumption Visualized states, “Globally, ChatGPT uses around 39.16 million gallons daily, the equivalent of everyone in Taiwan flushing their toilet at once.” Furthermore, that means every month more than one billion gallons of fresh water is being dedicated to artificial intelligence. Data has shown that every 20-50 questions ChatGpt needs 500mL (16 oz bottle) of water to cool it down.
Now imagine millions of people using ChatGPT every minute. That’s awfully a lot of water being withdrawn to cool these data centers. When we withdraw high levels of water, it throws off communities and aquatic life.
ChatGPT water usage affects aquatic life by destroying habitats, reducing biodiversity, altering migration, and increasing stress, leading to population declines or extinction. How its operation does this is by withdrawing large amounts of water, lowering water levels, causing thermal pollution, throwing heated water back into the water source, and stressing or killing aquatic organisms.
These are only some of the effects ChatGPT’s water usage has on aquatic life. But ChatGPT’s water source is being withdrawn even from drought-prone areas. Not only does it take from local residents, but it also competes with them and their agriculture.
Although ChatGPT can be very helpful when used correctly, I think we should be less concerned about the advancement of AI (ChatGPT) because it negatively impacts our environment. Rather, we should focus on our intellectual health by not being reliant on ChatGPT for every question or problem we have. So next time you have questions for ChatGPT: think about how much water you will use and how it will affect our sacred earth.
