Health-Informed Computing: Estimating and Addressing the Public Health Impact of Data Centers

2024/12/09 by Yuelin Han, Han, Yuelin, Zhifeng Wu +7 · 32 voices · 5 citations
#cs.CY

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.06288

Abstract

The surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI) has led to a rapid expansion of energy-intensive data centers, contributing to criteria air pollutant emissions and raising public health concerns that have received comparatively limited attention in sustainability assessments. This paper introduces a principled methodology to model air pollutant emissions for data centers and estimate the public health impacts. Our findings reveal that the growing demand for AI and computing technologies is projected to push the total annual public health burden of U.S. data centers up to more than 20 billion in 2028. Although national-level impacts remain modest, data center health costs are unevenly distributed: in the most affected counties, the estimated per-household health burden can reach about seven times the national average. Next, we propose a health-informed computing framework that explicitly incorporates public health impacts into data center resource management across space and time, mitigating public health costs while supporting environmental sustainability. More broadly, we recommend extended energy reporting to include public health impact of data centers and paying attention to all impacted communities.

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Discussions

• Wow: "our screening analysis demonstrates that driven by the growing demand for AI, the U.S. data centers could contribute to, among others, approximately 600,000 asthma symptom cases and 1,300 premat [bsky, 122 points, 4 comments]
• This new paper by Caltech and UC Riverside (UCR) scientists tries to quantify the public health implications of AI, and it’s pretty devastating. ChatGPT might cost us a lot more than just our data. N [bsky, 25 points, 0 comments]
• The significant health costs of AI data centres - something the tech firms, politicians and media are not telling us… arxiv.org/pdf/2412.06288 [bsky, 22 points, 4 comments]
• Quantifying the public health impacts of AI - it has impacts on the environment and ecosystems of which humans are part arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 18 points, 0 comments]
• Well, I can admit it when I'm wrong. They did find a killer use of AI. arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 15 points, 2 comments]
• Not to mention: "Specifically, AI's lifecycle, from chip manufacturing to data center operation, significantly degrades air quality through emissions of criteria air pollutants such as fine particulat [bsky, 11 points, 0 comments]
• "Our findings reveal that training an AI model...can produce air pollutants equivalent to more than 10,000 round trips by car between LA and NYC. The total public health burden of U.S. data centers in [bsky, 10 points, 0 comments]
• A very provocative paper 👉 "The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying the Public Health Impact of AI" arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 9 points, 1 comments]
• “The public health costs unevenly impact economically disadvantaged communities, where the per-household health burden could be 200x more than that in less-impacted communities.” Source: “The Unpaid [bsky, 8 points, 1 comments]
• A quick search. So I know %100% that AI is currently devastating for our planet. arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 7 points, 1 comments]
• "Training an AI model of the Llama-3.1 scale can produce air pollutants equivalent to more than 10,000 round trips by car between Los Angeles and New York City." arxiv.org/pdf/2412.06288 [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
• The data center boom in the desert [lemmy, 2 points, 0 comments]
• The underlying preprint (arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288) on which this is based has some serious methodological flaws. For example, the paper says "The scope-1 public health impact of AI primarily comes fr [bsky, 2 points, 2 comments]
• The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying and Addressing the Public Health Impact of Data Centers. arXiv:2412.06288 [cs.CY]. Available: arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 A landmark study has put a dollar figure on what the [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• Un reciente estudio, en fase de revisión, sobre el impacto de los centros de datos para la inteligencia artificial en la salud: The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying the Public Health Impact of AI arxiv.org/pd [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• I want to apologize in advance, I really don't want to be antagonistic about this, believe me. I read through the linked study arxiv.org/pdf/2412.06288 , and while I'm not an expert in this, it seems [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
• Nate, I just posted that article. At least read it first before reflexively acting like you're somehow the victim here. Also, here's the study that backs up the article I cited. [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• 4) "Across its entire lifecycle — from chip manufacturing to data center operation — AI contributes substantially to air quality degradation and public health costs through the emission of various cri [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
• Companies, researchers, academics, users of AI have conscious and careful decisions to make about using AI just because it's available: arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• Aihetta käsitellyt jo myös FT www.ft.com/content/d595... ja kertonut tekoälyn kasvattaman energiankulutuksen ja siihen liittyvien varsinaisten haittojen kantilta lainaamalla tutkimusta, joka saatavill [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• Une étude arXiv estime que la pollution générée par ces datacenters pourrait causer jusqu’à 1 300 décès prématurés par an aux États-Unis d’ici 2030. L’étude n’a qu’un mois, ça semble être une éternité [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• Read their full report here: arxiv.org/pdf/2412.06288 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• This paper breaks the illusion: AI isn’t just thinking machines. It’s breathing machines—drawing power from systems that choke someone else. And until health is priced into compute: intelligence will [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• From this study "The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying the Public Health Impact of AI" arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
• «The surging demand for AI has led to a rapid expansion of energy-intensive data centers, impacting the environment through escalating carbon emissions and water consumption. » arxiv.org/abs/2412.0628 [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
• The surging demand for AI has led to a rapid expansion of energy-intensive data centers, impacting the environment through escalating carbon emissions and water consumption. The public health burden t [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Remind me again why the cat's out of the bag, the genie's out of the bottle, etc. etc.? 😵‍💫 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• "Although national-level impacts remain modest, data center health costs are unevenly distributed: in the most affected counties, the estimated per-household health burden can reach about seven times [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
• L'impact total sur la santé publique des centres de données américains en 2030 sera comparable à celui des émissions des véhicules routiers de la Californie. #IA #santé #pollution #centresdedonnées ar [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• all so the same five men can commit white collar crime indefinitely and steal the opportunity to draw tentacle monsters from human artists arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
• The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying the Public Health Impact of AI | arXiv arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

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