Shifting where data is processed for AI can reduce environmental harm

Large AIs can have a significant environmental impact because they rely on thousands of power-hungry computing servers housed within huge data centres. But the environmental damage could be reduced by better distributing the demands to different locations.

Such scheduling algorithms might lighten the AI workload on data centres in Arizona during summer droughts to reduce water-based cooling. It could also, in theory, favour a data centre region in Finland where 94 per cent of energy used is carbon-free …