AI: Savior or Villain?

 

by Eric Diekhans 

AI is the genie that can’t be put back in the bottle. Despite growing opposition to data centers and fears that AI will cause massive job losses and could even end humankind, the march toward an AI future seems unstoppable; we can only guide it, not stop it.

We’ve been in this boat before. Petroleum-based energy once seemed like a miracle of the modern world. In many ways, it was. It ended our reliance on horses. It enabled a massive increase in agricultural production. It was the fuel that literally gave us wings, enabling air travel and space flight. Few people foresaw the devastating effects of burning fuel on our planet. We are not as ignorant today, yet we keep rushing forward, embracing new technology while ignoring its environmental costs.

AI’s Benefits to the Environment

Despite our climate-change-denying government, scientists are generating vast amounts of data on climate change and its environmental effects. Climate simulations once required supercomputers running for weeks or even months. AI emulators can now run the same simulations on a single processor in hours, producing more data while consuming much less energy.

AI can quickly analyze regional climate models and focus on the impacts of climate-related events, such as floods and heatwaves, at a hyper-local level, enabling better forecasting. It can integrate models and identify nonlinear patterns in satellite and historical data to more accurately track and predict ocean-atmosphere interactions, such as El Niño cycles.

AI can improve grid resilience by enhancing wildfire and extreme-storm hazard analysis and helping ensure safe operations. AI can also help produce cleaner fuels, such as those from fusion technology, by improving their predictability and yield. AI can generate better wind energy forecasts, increasing the value of wind energy output.

AI is also important for monitoring deforestation, a leading cause of climate change. In Brazil, the Rainforest Connection uses AI-enabled acoustic sensors to detect chainsaw sounds linked to illegal logging. AI-powered machine learning models can analyze large datasets to improve future climate predictions. AI can also enhance climate models, enabling increasingly precise predictions about climate change and its impacts.

AI can help farmers increase yields by analyzing data to show them where and when to plant, how much fertilizer to use, and when to harvest. AI can also better predict rainfall and drought. It can even operate high-efficiency, driverless tractors.

 

AI’s Environmental Costs

 As many of us already know, AI also has serious negative environmental consequences. It uses huge amounts of water and electricity. AI already consumes as much electricity as the entire nation of Japan, and that consumption will double in the next two years. 

AI data centers use large amounts of water to cool massive server racks that generate intense heat. They run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, leaving no opportunity for overnight or seasonal shutdowns. Most data centers use open-loop evaporative systems, in which water absorbs server heat and evaporates, requiring a continuous supply of fresh water. This water demand especially affects already water-stressed areas.

Data centers also require a massive amount of land, often taking valuable farmland out of production.

The bottom line is that even with a potential ten percent improvement in energy efficiency from AI, doubling the number of data centers to meet AI demand will increase global greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent.

While AI offers many benefits, without responsible leadership as it expands, its devastating effects on the planet will far outweigh those benefits.

 

Eric Diekhans’ fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and the anthology Uncensored Ink. He is the recipient of a local Emmy for Children’s Television and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in screenwriting, and was a 2026 Writer in Residence at Write On, Door County. He is a member of Lake View Presbyterian Church in Chicago. (www.ericdiekhans.com)