Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers undeniable convenience, but at what cost to our environment?
- Excessive use of AI negatively impacts the global carbon footprint.
- Search engines like Ecosia, which operates on renewable energy, may pave the way for a carbon-negative future.
- Students are divided between choosing Ecosia over ChatGPT, as the AI tool provides an ease that Ecosia has not yet replicated.
In a recent investigation by The Daily Maverick it was found that a whole generation is using ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMS) to secure their degrees. Not only posing a threat to academic integrity, but the environment as well.
Wits Vuvuzela spoke to Professor David Phaho, Director of the African Energy Leadership Centre and Discipline at Wits University, about AI and the global carbon footprint.
“They require 99.99% availability, implying that the energy sources which are available should be available at all times. You cannot switch on the sun at will. So, at the moment they [tech companies] are huge consumers of gas, oil, and coal, contributing to CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions,” he said.
It is estimated that the data centre’s LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude operate from, use the same amount of water in a single day as 30,000 residential homes would. Data centre’s use freshwater to cool their servers.
In Berlin, Germany, circa 2009, the non-profit organisation and search engine, ‘Ecosia’ was born. Though not popular at the time of inception, increased climate change awareness has made it a sustainable alternative for young people.
Ecosia uses renewable solar energy to power its servers and invests 80% of its profits in planting trees to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Phaho said the problem with companies using non-renewable energy rather than renewable energy is not cost, but accessibility. He said what is needed is, “policy at government level to incentivise [the] private sector to invest in renewable energy coupled with energy storage, because if you can store energy when the sun is shining, you can continue powering.”
Nokwanda Ndlovu, a member of the Wits Climate Justice Charter Movement (CJCM), is a recent adopter. “It was not too long ago that I discovered Ecosia as I only learnt about AI contributing to carbon emissions about a month or two ago through a course on sustainability, before this I did not use AI often,” she said.
“With this knowledge,” she added, “I’m not choosing it [AI].”
Another Wits CJCM member, Khavisani Annah Mhlarhi, said: “I think as students we associate activism with being on the ground fighting for justice, which is always good, but you can contribute to the fight in subtle ways, like doing an Ecosia Search instead on using AI or Google.”
Though even with this goal, students default to ChatGPT for convenience.
Despite knowing about the carbon emissions, Mhlarhi uses AI to check the grammar on her assignments. “We need ChatGPT to survive,” she said.
So, what does this mean for the future of climate activism? Will more students make environmentally conscious decisions, or will AI persist because of the ease it brings?
FEATURED IMAGE: A hand holding a magnifying glass and through it seeing the ChatGPT logo. Source: ChatGPT logo sourced from Wikipedia. Graphic: Ekta Seebran.
Related Articles:
- Wits Vuvuzela, SLICE: World Press Freedom Day: AI is here to stay, are we ready to give it a home?, May 2025.
- Wits Vuvuzela, The faculty for health science embraces the use of AI in teaching, July 2023.
- Wits Vuvuzela, Climate change and migration in SA, December 2022.
