They warn about the social impact of creative artificial intelligence.

2025/01/22 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Etika
• Adimen artifiziala
• Hardwarea
• Ingurumena
• Berdintasuna
• Ekologia

Three prestigious US universities (Northwestern, Harvard, and Texas) have jointly analysed the environmental and social impacts of artificial intelligence (AI). The research, published openly in the journal Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, gathers not only the hardware of the AI, but also the consequences of its training and development.

Waste generated by hardware, life-cycle carbon footprint, water and energy consumption, the need for rare earths and heat released by data centres and processing units, for example, has already been highlighted. The article also presents the social consequences that hardware generates from a social point of view: gentrification, health impact, noise pollution and psychological problems.

Training and development have also included the environmental consequences: continuous updating, increasing data storage capacity, network traffic and resource exploitation. Social issues, on the other hand: digital divide, use of few languages, labour rights and inadequate wages and limited vision (e.g. racial and gender discrimination).

Many of these impacts have already been mentioned here and there. But the article, in addition to collecting them, also makes proposals to reduce the consequences and point to the future. Among the proposals is the importance given to communities. Specifically, among its priorities are the analysis of the communities affected by the impacts, the joint design with the communities or the support for the initiatives and policies generated by them. They also mention improving working conditions: job security, fair wages and safe workplaces. And they have insisted on the need for ethical governance.

They propose to create models of impact assessment for the future, with a comprehensive and transdisciplinary vision. They also call for transparent recognition of the material and personal resources used by those who develop and implement creative AI. To this end, they consider that policy makers and regulators should exert pressure and monitor companies. The ultimate objective of the articulists is to achieve development and ethical and sustainable use with the environment.