Happy Spring! 🌿

 

Sorry for not getting the February newsletter out. I was moving like a snail all month--I had the content, but couldn't find the time to put it all together. And this month, I've been having an internal debate about how I feel about A.I.- it changes daily. 

 

The intro explores the intersection between wellness and A.I. Would love to hear your perspectives on generative AI and how you utilize it.  

 

♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖♺ 🤖

 

AI is everywhere. You literally cannot escape it, and probably have been using it more than you realize. Personally, I’ve used the Gemini “polish” feature for emails, and I’ll get ChatGPT to proofread my newsletter introductions for grammatical errors. I also use the free version of Grammarly (which I didn’t realize was AI until last year 😣) With that being said, I’m concerned about the social, intellectual, and environmental implications of unrestricted, uninhibited AI usage. Today I’m focusing on the environment. Let’s talk about it.

 

Utilizing AI has and will continue to drive both energy and water bills higher. Data centers power AI models. There are about 4000 data centers across the US and 3,000 planned. The power needed to run or maintain data centers is astronomical, but it’s hard to pin down an exact usage figure. "Every ChatGPT query, for example, is estimated to use five times more electricity than a simple web search."

 

In addition to the power/energy consumed by data centers, water is a resource that’s abundantly needed to absorb heat from all the computing equipment, so the processing chips won’t overheat. Large data centers consume almost 450 million gallons of water per day-that is insane! Why are we using AI to create images of us at work again?? 🤔

 

Yes, there’s a place for generative AI, and yes, we cannot escape it, even if we try, but I’m stuck on the frivolous and self-serving uses. Often, AI is used for basic tasks, and brain power is turned off (…no comment of what I've seen AI used for.) Use your brain, people. Why don’t we want to think anymore?