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MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 60.03.04

Risks to the environment

Category: Systemic risks

Open the MIT Risk Navigator All entries from Bengio2025

Description

"General- purpose AI is a moderate but rapidly growing contributor to global environmental impacts through energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Current estimates indicate that data centres and data transmission account for an estimated 1% of global energy- related GHG emissions, with AI consuming 10–28% of data centre energy capacity. AI energy demand is expected to grow substantially by 2026, with some estimates projecting a doubling or more, driven primarily by general-purpose AI systems such as language models."

From International AI Safety Report 2025 (Bengio2025), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).

Classification

Causal entity
AI
Timing
Other

Subdomain definition: 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.

Real-world incidents in this subdomain

Browse all incidents in this subdomain

How other frameworks describe this risk

  • Excessive water consumption

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Electronic waste

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Excessive energy consumption

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Natural resource depletion

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Excessive landfill

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Carbon emissions

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Biodiversity loss

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Pollution

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

Other entries from Bengio2025