Skip to main content
Home/Risks/Cunha & Estima (2023)/Environmental and socioeconomic harms

Environmental and socioeconomic harms

Navigating the Landscape of AI Ethics and Responsibility

Cunha & Estima (2023)

Category
Risk Domain

The development and operation of AI systems causing environmental harm, such as through energy consumption of data centers, or material and carbon footprints associated with AI hardware.

"At a time of increasing climate urgency, energy consumption and the carbon footprint of AI applications are also matters of ethics and responsibility [68]. As with other energy-intensive technologies like proof-of-work blockchain, the call is to research more environmentally sustainable algorithms to offset the increasing use scale."(p. 100)

Other risks from Cunha & Estima (2023) (5)