A feature from The Verge examines the environmental and ethical costs of GPUs, the chips powering the current AI boom, arguing that scrutiny should extend beyond AI data centres to the broader history and use of graphics processors. The piece notes that hundreds of thousands of GPUs are being installed in data centres worldwide, but that the same chips also power smartphones, cars and gaming PCs, raising the question of why AI alone is singled out for its environmental footprint when manufacturing, energy and water use, and e-waste concerns apply across the whole industry.

The article traces GPU origins back to 1970s arcade graphics hardware, predating Nvidia's 1999 "world's first GPU" marketing claim, and cites Staffordshire University ethics professor Catherine Flick on how gaming has long served as a testbed for technologies with significant ethical implications, including AI. It also highlights Nvidia's revenue growth, with data-centre revenue rising from around $0.6 billion in fiscal 2018 to over $62 billion in fiscal 2026, and discusses how the US, home to the largest concentration of data centres, is seeing communities increasingly confront the local impact of new hyperscale facilities being built to support AI expansion.