As a local part-time politician I have noticed how artificial intelligence has become popular, especially among civil servants. Everyone is urged to “try out” ChatGPT, for the sake of its brilliance, its ability to help us. However, the impact of AI does not equal considerations of environmental impacts.
In a very near future, my suspicion is that standard environmental impact assessments (EIA) might become a procedure, a common perspective brought to the table for consideration whenever an AI program (yes, I’m fully aware they’re called models, but I will persist in calling them programs, as in computer programs) is used or acquired by public authorities. How much energy has this program, used by land surveyors, cost to train? How much has this program, used for the registry or for writing a proposal referred, affected the climate as in carbon dioxide emissions?
Likewise, I believe there will be risk assessments in alignment with the European Union’s AI Act.In fact, the Swedish government approved an Official Government Reports Series (named Safe and reliable use of AI in Sweden) to adapt Swedish regulation to the EU level.
Another prediction is how AI will not remain large LLMs or programs. Instead, the public sector will use small, specific programs, perhaps even local programs similar to DeepSeek, to training on local data for local use.
AI giants have increased their carbon emissions since the AI boom began. Microsoft has increased emissions, and so has Google, in both cases related to data centres focused on AI. I read in the Washington Post how Eric Schmidt (now of the Special Competitive Studies Project) asserted environmental concerns need to step back in favour of development of energy for the sake of AI. AI programs will simply solve climate change and environmental destruction. What a relief.
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