Over the past few years, Artificial Intelligence has skyrocketed into popularity, with the creation of ChatGPT in November of 2022 sparking the everyday use of AI. While its overtaking of society is already controversial for several reasons, the detrimental environmental impacts of AI are often overlooked.
One of the most notable consequences of AI is its effect on the climate. Artificial Intelligence requires an extensive amount of training, which uses a large amount of computing power and electricity. Even more energy is then used to make the system run, resulting in egregious carbon dioxide emissions. Over time, this increases our carbon footprint, especially with the excessive use of AI that is common today. For example, the training of ChatGPT-3 alone produced about 500 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of driving a gasoline car for 2,500,000 miles.
Besides producing greenhouse gases, AI also uses a significant amount of water to cool down its systems. According to the World Economic Forum, a fifth of AI servers today use water from limited watersheds. With the California wildfires in 2025 spreading uncontrollably, it is obvious that AI’s excessive need for water is hindering our ability to control natural disasters. In 2025 alone, there were 359 wildfires in California, which in total burned 57,660 acres.
Finally, the e-waste produced by AI technology is extremely hazardous to the environment, containing heavy metals that are toxic to humans such as lead, mercury, and chromium. E-waste is considered any discarded electrical or electronic equipment. High-performance computing hardware used with generative AI is the main source of this e-waste. With AI technology constantly evolving, computing devices only have a lifespan of about two to five years before they are thrown out and replaced.
While Artificial Intelligence is a groundbreaking technology that sparks innovation and convenience, its negative impact on the environment cannot be ignored. While the media has done little to raise awareness on these issues, acknowledging the consequences of AI use and increasing education on safe AI use is essential to mitigate this worldwide problem. To continue this new common utilization of AI, technology needs to become more energy efficient. Finding ways to reuse and recycle e-waste, exploring alternative cooling systems, and developing more sustainable hardware to decrease carbon emissions are all steps that need to be taken to reduce the detrimental effects of this new technology.
