Who’s afraid of the big, bad GPU?
The Verge Justine Calma
Data centers powering AI models consume enormous amounts of energy and water while producing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, with GPUs in these facilities now drawing scrutiny for environmental and health impacts. Training Meta's Llama 3.1 could generate air pollution equivalent to 10,000 round-trip car journeys between Los Angeles and New York, and AI data centers' power consumption is projected to reach 165-326 terawatt-hours annually by 2028 in the US. Communities are increasingly concerned as data centers expand in their regions, raising utility costs and local pollution while many consumers question whether promised AI benefits justify the environmental costs.
Why it matters
How does AI make you feel? Are you excited to “vibe-code” your smart home? Or anxious about all the added pollution and billions of gallons of water used by data centers? Dig a little deeper and you’ll start to question the actual value of the GPUs that underpin all the leaps and promises of generative […]
