Hungry AI is already damaging health – and it is getting worse

Since data centers consume even more energy to meet the intensive computing requirements of artificial intelligence, they increase the emission of air pollutants. It can already affect public health and by 2030, it can contribute to an estimated 600,000 asthma cases per year and 1300 premature deaths in the US – which will contribute more than one third of the annual asthma in the country Is responsible for

“Public health effects have direct and concrete effects on people, and these effects are sufficient and where data centers are operated are not limited to a small scope,” says Shaolei Rain At the University of California, Riverside. They say, because airborne pollution can cover long distances, the increasing level of pollutants can affect people’s health across the country.

Rain and his colleagues developed those estimates based on the demand for estimated power from the data centers. In the US, some part of that demand is being met by burning fossil fuels, which produces air pollutants that cause health problems, such as micro -particle substance. For example, according to researchers, the use of electricity required to train any one of today’s big AI models can produce air pollutants equal to driving a passenger car for more than 10,000 rounds between Los Angeles and New York City Is.

To model these air pollution and emission effects in the US, researchers used one tool Granted by the US Environmental Protection Agency. He calculated that, at the national level, the total public health costs of data centers could exceed $ 20 billion by 2030. This is almost double the public health costs of the American steel manufacturing industry and possibly equal to the health effects of pollutants emitted from millions of people. According to researchers, the number of vehicles in the largest American states such as California.

Energy hunger data centers are already affecting public health. Researchers estimated that gas-powered generators used as a backup at Virginia’s Data Center Elle can already cause 14,000 cases of asthma symptoms and public health of $ 220 million to $ 300 million per year Can cost. These are the costs if generators emit only 10 percent of pollutants which state officials allow to emit every year. If they are repeatedly used to emit a maximum permitted level, the total public health costs can be up to $ 3 billion per year. Such problems not only affect local residents, but also affect people from distant states like Florida.

Some technical companies involved in the race to create data centers are supporting low -emitted energy sources, financing renewable energy projects and investing in both traditional nuclear power plants and new nuclear reactor technologies. But right now, many data centers are still highly dependent on fossil fuel energy such as natural gas – previous research suggests that data centers can increase the American demand for gas equal to almost any other New York state or California by 2030.

“Questions related to the health effects of artificial intelligence and data center computing are an important,” says Benjamin Lee At the University of Pennsylvania. He described this paper as “the first paper to estimate these costs and determine them in terms of the dollar”, but also warned that the underlying estimates and perceptions behind specific numbers need to be validated by additional research.