AI's looming climate cost: Energy demand surges amid data center race

PALO ALTO, California -- Artificial intelligence is dangerous. But the main risk may not be the one popularized by Hollywood -- a malevolent superintelligence bent on destroying humanity. Instead, AI itself could be benign, but its insatiable appetite for energy and growing carbon footprint could present a far greater threat: the acceleration of wildfires, floods, extreme weather and all of the dangers that come with climate change.

The environmental cost of AI has been, until now, at the bottom of most governments' and users' priority lists, behind concerns like copyright infringement, job displacement, and yes, out-of-control killer robots. But experts are increasingly underlining the climate risks, such as massive energy and water needs, growing emissions and electronic waste, that come with training and deploying exponentially larger AI models.