Say a person takes their French Bulldog, Bowser, to the dog park. Identifying Bowser as he plays among the other canines is easy for the dog-owner to do while onsite.

A recent study from Oregon State University estimated that more than 3,500 animal species are at risk of extinction because of factors including habitat alterations, natural resources being overexploited, and climate change.

For patients with inflammatory bowel disease, antibiotics can be a double-edged sword. The broad-spectrum drugs often prescribed for gut flare-ups can kill helpful microbes alongside harmful ones, sometimes worsening symptoms over time. When fighting gut inflammation, you don’t always want to bring a sledgehammer to a knife fight.

Say a local concert venue wants to engage its community by giving social media followers an easy way to share and comment on new music from emerging artists. Rather than working within the constraints of existing social platforms, the venue might want to create its own social app with the functionality that would be best for its community. But building a new social app from scratch involves many complicated programming steps, and even if the venue can create a customized app, the organization’s followers may be unwilling to join the new platform because it could mean leaving their connections and data behind.

In part 2 of our two-part series on generative artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts, MIT News explores some of the ways experts are working to reduce the technology’s carbon footprint.