Chen Yu (City University of Hong Kong) and Heng Wang (Singapore Management University, Yong Pung How School of Law) have posted The Misaligned Regulation of AI’s Environmental Externalities: A Tale of Three Intersecting Regimes on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The global expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) has driven massive cross-border investment in capital-intensive AI ecosystems. While AI can advance environmental sustainability, it also carries severe environmental externalities, particularly surging energy and water consumption, increased carbon emissions, and mounting e-waste. Using the case study of AI’s environmental footprint, this article examines the limits of existing rules in governing disruptive, resource-intensive technologies.
The article analyses an important and urgent question: Do three overlapping regimes of AI governance, international investment law, and environmental sustainability suffice to address AI’s environmental externalities? It argues that existing rules within the regimes fail to adequately address the issue primarily due to the priortisation of non-environmental interests and scientific uncertainty regarding AI’s environmental footprint, which manifests as the regulatory lag in AI legislation, the systemic failure of international investment law in balancing environmental protection and investment protection, and the limited application of environmental law principles. It also draws on the history of whaling regulation to identify lessons that inform pathways to regulate AI’s environmental footprint. Ultimately, each regime needs to evolve and innovate, while reinforcing cross-regime coordination. Achieving this relies as much on technological and regulatory capacity as on political willingness, with the latter remaining highly uncertain.
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Lawrence Solum