Regulation needed for AI, technology environmental impact

Concerns about the environmental impacts of advanced technologies such as AI is prompting debate over whether computing-intensive applications and the chips that power them need to be regulated. That's according to experts speaking during the "Advancing Technology for a Sustainable Planet" conference hosted by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. At the same time, many of these technologies also help companies meet sustainability goals -- meaning companies need balance between quickly adopting and scaling emerging technologies and understanding how those technologies could affect the company's overall environmental impact. Environmental impact depends on scale -- particularly for a technology like artificial intelligence, said Peter Henderson, a Ph.D student in computer science at Stanford University, during a conference panel session. Companies often optimize AI algorithms to address energy use and carbon emission concerns before deploying a machine learning model.