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Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI
Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI
Can artificial intelligence really enrich fossil-fuel companies and fight climate change at the same time? The tech giant says yes.
Microsoft has continued to seek business from the fossil-fuel industry; documents related to its overall pitch strategy show that it has sought energy-industry business in part by marketing the abilities to optimize and automate drilling and to maximize oil and gas production
The idea that AI’s climate benefits will outpace its environmental costs is largely speculative, however, especially given that generative-AI tools are themselves tremendously resource-hungry
Microsoft has failed to reduce its annual emissions each year since then. Its latest environmental report, released this May, shows a 29 percent increase in emissions since 2020—a change that has been driven in no small part by recent AI development, as the company explains in the report. “All of Microsoft’s public statements and publications paint a beautiful picture of the uses of AI for sustainability,” Alpine told me. “But this focus on the positives is hiding the whole story, which is much darker.”
One slide deck from January 2022 that I obtained presented an analysis of how Microsoft’s tools could allow ExxonMobil to increase its annual revenue by $1.4 billion—$600 million of which would come from maximizing so-called sustainable production, or oil drilled using less energy.
An executive strategy memo from June 2023 indicated that Microsoft hoped to pitch Chevron on adopting OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to “deliver more business value.” A Chevron spokesperson told me that the company uses AI in part to “identify efficiencies in exploration and recovery and help reduce our environmental footprint.” There is the tension. On the one hand, AI may be able to help reduce drilling’s toll on the environment. On the other hand, it’s used for drilling.
“AI will solve more problems than it creates,” Willis told me. “A lot of the dilemmas that we’re facing with energy will be resolved because of the relationship with generative AI.”
Microsoft is reportedly planning a $100 billion supercomputer to support the next generations of OpenAI’s technologies; it could require as much energy annually as 4 million American homes
As Joppa told me: “This must be the most money we’ve ever spent in the least amount of time on something we fundamentally don’t understand.”
Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI
ByteDance Steps Up AI Chip Efforts
ByteDance Steps Up AI Chip Efforts
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is accelerating efforts to make its own artificial intelligence chips as it looks for an edge over its rivals in China’s AI chatbot market. ByteDance is aiming for mass production of two semiconductors it has designed by 2026, in collaboration with chipmaker ...
ByteDance Steps Up AI Chip Efforts
Global data center industry to emit 2.5 billion tons of CO2 through 2030, Morgan Stanley says
Global data center industry to emit 2.5 billion tons of CO2 through 2030, Morgan Stanley says
A boom in data centers is expected to produce about 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions globally through the end of the decade, and accelerate investments in decarbonization efforts, according to Morgan Stanley research.
Global data center industry to emit 2.5 billion tons of CO2 through 2030, Morgan Stanley says