AI and Data Centres: What's the climate cost? - The Climate Question podcast, BBC World Service

As AI booms, huge new data centres are opening from Texas to Indonesia. What's their impact on the local environment, and on the fight against climate change? Click here to subscribe to our channel 👉🏽 https://bbc.in/3VyyriM The new data centres powering the AI revolution are the size of small cities, with their own road networks and sometimes even their own power plants! These huge developments create thousands of jobs, but local campaigners worry about the water that data centres use, as well as the heat they generate and the land they take up. Climate activists also point to the huge power demands of data centres and the associated carbon emissions. So just how bad are data centres for our planet? And do we also need to think more about the environmental price of our own digital habits, like making AI cat videos! In this episode of The Climate Question, Hosts Graihagh Jackson and Jordan Dunbar talk to Rabih Bashroush, Professor of Digital Infrastructure at the University of East London. In a future show, we'll look at some of the ways AI technology is HELPING us battle climate change. 00:00 Why our digital habits need an environmental "label" 01:03 Meet our guest Professor Rabih Bashroush! 01:22 Visting Open AI's massive Stargate site in Texas 02:37 The differences between cloud storage, streaming and AI computing 03:27 The challenge of cooling CPU chips 04:59 How evaporative cooling works 07:20 Why AI uses GPU chips, not CPUs 08:30 The huge power demands of new AI data centres 10:29 Why AI data centres use much less water 11:50 Summary so far! 12:35 Carbon emissions and the climate cost 14:04 How fast will AI data centres grow! 15:35 Why AI companies have to build their own power stations 18:27 Consumers need to stop using AI in "crazy" ways 19:29 The environmental cost of using AI should be be clearer 21:09 The climate cost of cute cat videos! Watch more episodes from The Climate Question here 👉 • The Climate Question ---------------- This is the official BBC World Service YouTube channel. If you like what we do, you can also find us here: Instagram 👉🏽   / bbcworldservice   Twitter 👉🏽   / bbcworldservice   Facebook 👉🏽   / bbcworldservice   BBC World Service website 👉🏽 https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio Thanks for watching and subscribing! #BBCWorldService #WorldService #datacenter #AI #climatechange #cloudcomputing #engineering #energy #openai