Press release
AI Action Summit: AlgorithmWatch demands sustainable AI
While tech companies portray AI as the solution to the climate crisis and call for more and bigger AI, AI’s energy consumption has reached unprecedented heights. Since the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit takes place next week, AlgorithmWatch calls for urgent steps to align AI with planetary boundaries.
RomoloTavani from Getty Images via Canva
Dr. Angela Müller
Executive Director AlgorithmWatch CH | Executive Board Member AlgorithmWatch
France will host the summit on 10 and 11 February 2025 in Paris with global government representatives, leaders of international organizations, tech companies, academia, non-governmental organizations, and members of civil society attending, including AlgorithmWatch CH.
The summit comes at a time when the «the bigger, the better» mentality in AI modeling is getting out of hand. AI development and deployment are among the factors driving the rise of the global energy demand. In order to train and run massive AI models, new data centers need to be built. All these data centers consume massive amounts of electricity, among other resources such as fresh water, not to mention the «blood minerals» AI relies on. As a rise in global energy consumption would aggravate the climate crisis, the data centers that power the AI hype become a matter of concern.
When looking at the AI industry and the power structures behind it, it is safe to say that the vast majority of tech companies are not investing billions of dollars in AI infrastructure to fight the climate crisis but rather to increase their profits. In pursuing their AI projects, Google already noted that reaching its «extremely ambitious» goal of net zero emissions by 2030 would be at risk. Big Tech currently has little obligations or incentives to follow a sustainability agenda that is more than a hollow PR slogan. The companies’ commitments are mostly voluntary and thus not reliable.
Big tech companies are providing the digital infrastructure at a global scale. As a result, we are becoming dangerously dependent on them. The call for more and more AI adoption in public and private life would result in an even bigger dependency, if answered. What would this mean for the transition of our global energy system and the pursuit of sustainability goals if the companies, at the same time, keep developing larger and larger AI models that consume more and more resources?
Such questions will be addressed at the AI Action Summit in Paris next week. Other topics include the increased inequality between those who control and those who use AI as well as how the small circle of private AI providers (Big Tech companies) is jeopardizing some countries’ agency to act as they do not have any leverage in this critical technology’s development. This should also be considered by the Federal Council, which is expected to publish its analysis on AI regulation by Mid-February.
At the summit, AlgorithmWatch will advocate for clear and effective requirements that «Public Interest AI» has to fulfill:
- Limiting energy and reducing resource consumption from digital infrastructure providers must be mandatory.
- Tech companies must be required to assess, measure, and reduce the environmental impact of AI along the value chain, and to make this assessment transparent. AI providers must release data on the environmental impact of their hardware development and transportation as well as information about thedisposal of hardware.
- They must ensure that upcoming data centers are only built if their energy demand is met with new and additional renewable energy that is locally produced and matches the energy use of the data centers. AI infrastructure providers must also disclose information about the development, resource consumption, and impact of data centers before they are builtso that utilities and grid planners can accurately plan for future energy needs.
- Tech companies must ensure that the mining of raw materials in their supply chain does not harm the environment or local communities and ensure that the building of any new data centers will not deplete water and land needed for people.
«The real existential threat of AI isn’t sentient machines − it is us allowing unchecked damage to our planet. Big Tech’s ‘bigger is better’ approach to AI development not only accelerates environmental harm but also entrenches its dominance. Without strict, enforceable rules, nothing will change. Name one industry that fixed its environmental damage without regulation. Exactly.» says Angela Müller, Executive Director AlgorithmWatch CH and Executive Board Member AlgorithmWatch, and adds: «This aspect must also not be overlooked by the Federal Council, which is about to decide on Switzerland’s path towards regulating AI».