Is AI Bad for the Planet?
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Is AI Bad for the Planet?
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I didn't plan to talk about sustainability at a recent keynote I gave for the American Institute of Architects. Turned out it was the only thing anyone wanted to talk about afterward. So today I'm tackling the question head-on: is AI bad for the planet? My answer isn't "stop using AI" — it's "use it lighter." I walk through the real numbers on data center water and power use, then break down four practical moves any leader can make: right-sizing your models (you don't need a frontier model to draft an email), using small and edge models that run locally, building context graphs instead of re-feeding entire documents, and fixing "prompt thrashing" through better batching. The throughline: sustainability isn't separate from responsible AI — it is responsible AI.