Energy-hungry AI is already a health hazard, and it’s getting worse

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 , which accounts for more than one-third of annual asthma deaths in the United States.

“The public health impact is a direct and visible impact on people, the impact is significant, and it is limited to the small area in which the data center operates,” said Xiaolei Ren of the University of California, Riverside. It is not.” “They affect people all over the country.”

Wren and his colleagues, including Caltech’s Adam Wierman, based these estimates on the data center’s projected power demand. Electricity demand creates additional emissions and contributes 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, the researchers used tools 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 as low as 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 companies[operating data centers]have largely failed to include standards for air pollutants in their sustainability reports, despite the clear public health impact, leading to self-regulation. “We cannot determine what should be reported based on the information provided,” he said. Julie Bolthouse of 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 estimated that by 2030, data centers will be roughly equivalent to one state in New York 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,” says Benjamin Lee of 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.