Congress notices AI's environmental impact, "no" to robot patrols and AI tutors, and some good reads

5 robot-related stories for this week

Congress looks at the AI explosion’s environmental costs

Looks as if 2024 will be remembered as the year the public grokked that AI-in-everything is going to have a real impact on the environment -- directly in carbon emissions and water usage; indirectly in the second-order impacts of making a whole lot of chips, from mining to manufacturing to transportation.

What impact, though? How much carbon from electricity demand, and how much water used for cooling data centers? It's a more complex question than trying to reckon the effect of digital life in total, because AI -- unlike playing Fortnite or mining Bitcoin -- could also contribute to reducing environmental damage. It could improve models, find efficiency improvements in materials, reduce fuel-wasting transportation snags, and so on.

I'll have more to say on this shortly but this week I just want to mention a new development in Washington: Some Democratic lawmakers have introduced a measure, the "Artificial Intelligence Environmenta…