How AI impacts the environment (and your energy bill)
It's Been a Minute
NPR
4.6 • 8.8K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2025
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You asked, and Brittany delivered. Many of you wrote in asking about artificial intelligence’s environmental impact. Brittany and Evan Halper, a business and energy reporter for The Washington Post, answer your questions and so much more. Like, is AI causing your energy bills to go up? Are tech companies tricking communities into building data centers? And how do you ethically use AI when you know it impacts nature?
This is the final episode in our AI + U series. You can check out past episodes (Can you trust the information AI gives you? Or How AI slop is clogging you brain) further down in this feed.
(0:35) The AI arms race and its immense energy demands
(5:24) How much energy does AI need to run? Where does that energy come from?
(9:13) Water usage and water quality concerns
(10:30) How does AI impact your energy bills?
(15:09) Can communities stop tech companies from building data centers?
(17:30) Why tech companies may skirt prior climate commitments
(18:49) How much AI should you use knowing its environmental impact?
Follow Brittany Luse on Instagram: @bmluse
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This message comes from 48 hours. |
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| 0:14.9 | Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:20.6 | Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, |
| 0:25.8 | a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. |
| 0:47.4 | What if I told you, AI slop, dead bots, and chatbots are all part of an ongoing global AI arms race? |
| 0:52.7 | So right now, the artificial intelligence industry is moving really quickly to innovate. |
| 0:54.5 | And the worry is that this has become a national security imperative, that whichever country dominates the AI industry will dominate all kinds |
| 1:00.1 | of sectors going forward and possibly dominate, you know, not just the economy, but militaries. |
| 1:07.0 | That is Evan Helper. He's a business reporter covering the energy transition for The Washington Post. |
| 1:12.9 | And so the U.S. has gotten over the last couple of years very concerned that it keep up with particularly China in this race, because China is also doing a lot of AI innovation. |
| 1:25.8 | And the worry is that if we do not get in front of this |
| 1:28.7 | and that we do not dominate the space, |
| 1:31.3 | that China will take it over. |
| 1:32.7 | In order to compete in this race, |
| 1:35.1 | tech companies have started to invest more and more |
| 1:37.7 | into AI development and research. |
| 1:39.9 | But AI requires a lot more than just money to work. |
| 1:43.4 | It needs a lot of space and energy to operate. |
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