Environmental Impacts of Technology: Power, Water, and the Cloud: The Environmental Costs of Building AI

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Option Green: Environmental Impacts of Technology: Power, Water, and the Cloud: The Environmental Costs of Building AI

Abhilash Mishra, Director, Kevin Xu Initiative on Science, Technology and Global Development, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago

7:00pm Eastern Time

The United States is undergoing one of the largest infrastructure investments in its history. Tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers to power artificial intelligence, a buildout that rivals the scale of the railroads and the country's electrification. This is happening just as the effects of climate change are becoming impossible to ignore. Communities across the country are pushing back against new data centers due to rising electricity bills, strained water supplies, and the prospect of more fossil fuel power plants. 

How big are these impacts and what can we do about it? Abhilash Mishra, a physicist and AI policy researcher at the University of Chicago, will walk through the evidence regarding AI's energy and water use, separating well-supported findings from hype. He will then look at thepolicies and community strategies that could make AI's growth more sustainable, and what residents can do to shape how it unfolds where they live.

Abhilash Mishra is a scientist, entrepreneur, and educator working on problems at the intersection of emerging technologies and global challenges. Abhilash is the Founder and Chief Science Officer of Equitech Futures, a talent network and applied research lab dedicated to technology for social impact.  Abhilash is also the founding director of the Kevin Xu Initiative on Technology and Public Policy at the Harris School. His current research focuses on understanding the opportunities and associated risks of emerging technologies in tackling global challenges. Abhilash is trained as a physicist and holds a PhD from Caltech and an MPhys from the University of Oxford. He received the Rhodes Scholarship in 2008, the Clinton Global Initiative University Distinguished Alumni Award, the KVPY Fellowship from the Government of India, and the Goldman Sachs Global Leader Award. Abhilash serves on the boards of NawiriTech and Measuring Carbon.

Co-sponsored by the East Brunswick Friends of the Library and the Friends of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission.

This program will be recorded.