Futurity December 30, 2024
A new study reveals artificial intelligence’s toxic air pollution footprint and toll on people’s health.
Computer processing demands for artificial intelligence, or AI, are spurring increasing levels of deadly air pollution from power plants and backup diesel generators that continuously supply electricity to the fast-growing number of computer processing centers.
This air pollution is expected to result in as many as 1,300 premature deaths a year by 2030 in the United States, and its public health costs from cancers, asthma, other diseases, and missed work and school days are approaching an estimated $20 billion a year.
Such are findings of a study by University of California, Riverside and Caltech scientists published as a preprint paper. Yet, these human and financial...