Google, Microsoft, and Meta's increasing use of data centers has resulted in increased air pollution from extensive fossil fuel energy consumption and associated public health costs related to treating cancers, asthma, and other similar issues, valued at over $5.4 billion in the past five years.
Comments
For example, the paper says "The scope-1 public health impact of AI primarily comes from the emission of operating on-site backup generators."
Some of my colleagues, for example, just released https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01671, a full lifecycle analysis of multiple generations of AI accelerator hardware.
I think all data center operators should work harder on clean energy goals, but some of these recent articles hating on data centers really exaggerate the overall impact of data centers relative to the rest of our US lifestyle
People minimizing mass-murder-for-profit never bother to do the fucking math.
Everything we touch creates lots of pollution. Data centers are actually run with far more efficiency and climate consciousness than most other industries
By every possible calculation data center usage is actually super low impact compared to most things.
For example, eating a single burger adds more CO2 than a server running all day at a data center
Whenever I take a video meeting instead of making a business trip, or work remotely from home instead of commuting, I'm using one of those data centres.
Without having run the numbers, my bet is that we'd net pollute more without them.
It’s crazy just how small the impact of data center usage is. But it’s an easy target right now instead of looking at the bigger, more polluting industries
I'm embedded in this society so-minimal as my use of resources is compared to smug people who assume I fly & eat dead flesh, I use things from other places-but using that as an argument is obviously bad faith.
That’s why data centers are a tiny percentage of the overall problem. It’s in bad faith to write an article that positions data centers as the story, when in reality data centers are extremely efficient and low impact compared to most industries
"chatGPT isn't as bad as the fossil fuel industry" is the kind of nonsense that only someone employed by amazon web services could make
The guy making the statement above works for Amazon's AI wing, so he is literally paid by Jeff Bezos to support AI whatever the facts, & whatever the ethics.
Since he is a hack paid by a plutocrat to say what he says, his arguments are not in good faith & should obviously be ignored.
But there's definitely places where it worth it, in my opinion
Meanwhile, I free up some of my time to do other useful things, or other work.
Isn't that better?
Shut your hoe ass up. Bootlicker cuck weirdo.
Those data centres run the world. If you listen to music on Spotify, it's coming from a Google data centre. If you watch Netflix, it's Amazon. And so on.
Going back to everyone running their own servers would be less energy efficient.
also, buy physical media since streaming is a rip off for the artist, and the consumer if the streaming platform suddenly pulls your "purchase"
https://loudounclimate.org/data-centers/
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19022025/scientists-launch-corporate-harm-research-center/
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/02/big-tech-data-center-buildouts-have-led-to-5-4-billion-in-public-health-costs/
https://bsky.app/profile/aarnegranlund.bsky.social/post/3liu5ajsp722u