Climate and Environmental Impacts of Artificial Intelligence

Adverse effects of climate change on our environment and life have been of significant concern and this concern has become more significant because of recent extreme hurricanes and flooding in various parts of the world. Artificial Intelligence (AI) based technologies are being adopted across all aspects of our life. One of the most frequent arguments in support of AI is that AI-based tools can achieve significant improvements in efficiency, which could translate into much better economic return while optimizing the use of resources. However, environmental and carbon footprints of datacenters training and facilitating the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT is enormous and is increasing rapidly with explosive growth in AI-related tools. This paper presents a detailed discussion on both beneficial and adverse aspects of AI with respect to its impacts on the climate and the environment based critical review of several available studies.