Hidden In the 'Cloud'

I'm unsure whether I should be actually posting this, as it may undercut my already mildly 'green' credentials? Mariana Mazzucato (University College of London) very effectively, however, reiterates that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is far from being the environmentally 'benign' force it portrays itself as. She opines that, in actuality, AI is 'guzzling resources at planet-eating rates' (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/30/ugly-truth-ai-chatgpt-guzzling-resources-environment). Mazzucato points out that infrastructure used by 'the cloud' data storage devices, generates more 'greenhouse gases' than global commercial airflights. Enormous quantities of water (circa 700,000 litres) were also used to cool the machines used to train ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft's data facilities. That cooling is, of course, still required in all cloud infrastructure. She suggests that things will only get worse, as 'Big Data' tends to site new facilities in 'Sunshine States'. Electricity can be generated there, using solar power. These locations, however, are also prone to water shortages. The electronics used in e-commerce, also require increased mining of rare lithium, cobalt etc. This activity, also generates many environmental problems. Mazzucato notes that the planned Google 'global datacenter' and Meta's new AI 'Research SuperCluster', will both be incredibly energy-intensive. It's notable that neither company have made any reference to this! There's gold in them thar clouds!