A recent review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found while many are experiencing the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI), there are risks that are still unknown.
Released April 22, federal workers were asked to conduct a technology assessment of generative AI (GenAI) effects, particularly its risks, in a report titled Artificial Intelligence: Generative AI’s Environmental and Human Effects.
The report examined the potential environmental effects of GenAI technologies, potential human effects , and what policy options exist to enhance the benefits or mitigate the environmental and human effects of generative AI technologies.
Energy Issues
“GenAI is already impacting entire industries—it has already dramatically increase productivity and transform daily tasks in many sectors,” the report states. “However, both its benefits and risks, including its environmental and human effects, are unknown or unclear.”
The authors noted GenAI uses significant energy and water resources that companies are generally not reporting details of these uses. Most estimates of environmental effects of GenAI technologies have focused on quantifying the energy consumed, and carbon emissions associated with generating that energy, required to train the GenAI model.
The Emergence of GenAI
GenAI is expected to be a driving force for data center demand. According to the International Energy Agency, U.S. data center electricity consumption was approximately four percent of U.S. electricity demand in 2022 and could be six percent by 2026. The report stressed what portion of data center electricity consumption is related to GenAI is unclear.
GAO highlights five risks and challenges that could result in negative human effects on society, culture, and people—lack of accountability, data privacy, cybersecurity concerns, unsafe systems and unintentional biases.
The reports highlighted unsafe systems may produce outputs that compromise safety, such as inaccurate information, undesirable content, or the enabling of malicious behavior. But definitive statements are difficult to make because GenAI is rapidly evolving, and private developers do not disclose some key technical information.
Solutions Offered
The federal agency identified GenAI policy options to consider to enhance the benefits or address the challenges of environmental and human effects. When it comes to human effects, it encouraged use of AI frameworks as well as share best practices and establish standards.
For AI frameworks, implementation examples included developers creating acceptable use policies that inform a product’s user community of policies they must adhere to while using the developer’s product. And it suggested governments could encourage the use of available frameworks, such as GAO’s AI Accountability Framework and National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework.
Opportunities and considerations include developers using these frameworks to manage risks and challenges of GenAI development and use and to increase public transparency and other trustworthiness characteristics; and internal and external testing, including independent review methods.
Best Practices
For shared best practices and establish standards, it is suggested industry or other standards-developing organizations could identify the areas most beneficial across different sectors or applications that use GenAI technologies.
To do this, it would require adoption of knowledge sharing mechanisms for the management of human effects challenges. This would comes from consensus being reached from from many public- and private-sector stakeholders can be time- and resource-intensive.
The negatives of GenAI the GAO cited include
- uses large amounts of energy and water;
- displacement of workers;
- helping spread false information;
- and creating or elevating risks to national security.
The reports authors concluded the continued growth of GenAI products and services raises questions about the scale of benefits and risks need to be addressed. In the end, GAO officials called for policy to be adopted by policymakers, which include Congress, federal agencies, state and local governments, academic and research institutions, and industry.