A data center for cryptocurrency mining, cloud services, and AI computing in Stutsman County, North Dakota.halbergman/Getty

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Republicans are pushing to pass a major spending bill that includes provisions to prevent states from enacting regulations on artificial intelligence. Such untamed growth in AI will take a heavy toll upon the world’s dangerously overheating climate, experts have warned.

About 1 billion tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide are set to be emitted in the US just from AI over the next decade if no restraints are placed on the industry’s enormous electricity consumption, according to estimates by researchers at Harvard University and provided to the Guardian.

This 10-year timeframe, a period of time in which Republicans want a “pause” of state-level regulations upon AI, will see so much electricity use in data centers for AI purposes that the US will add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than Japan does annually, or three times the yearly total from the UK.

The exact amount of emissions will depend on power plant efficiency and how much clean energy will be used in the coming years, but the blocking of regulations will also be a factor, said Gianluca Guidi, visiting scholar at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

“By limiting oversight, it could slow the transition away from fossil fuels and reduce incentives for more energy-efficient AI energy reliance,” Guidi said.

“To just proscribe any regulation of AI in any use case for the next decade is unbelievably reckless.”

“We talk a lot about what AI can do for us, but not nearly enough about what it’s doing to the planet. If we’re serious about using........

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