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.”

Blackwell” B200 AI chips will take at least three months longer to produce than was planne

Dario Maisto, a senior analyst at Forrester, says a lack of economically beneficial uses for generative AI is hampering the investment case.“There is still an issue of translating this technology into real, tangible economic benefit,” he said.

Dendup and Samdrup are the founders of NoMindBhutan, the country’s first artificial intelligence startup that makes and deploys chatbots.

ut given Bhutan’s closed physical and digital economy, NoMindBhutan’s journey is not easy. Startup and tech industry experts believe that for Bhutan to truly benefit from AI, the entire ecosystem needs to evolve.

“One of the main challenges we face is the inability to access international payment platforms such as Stripe and PayPal. Additionally, we do not have access to cloud servers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud to host our AI models, which is crucial for reducing costs and improving the quality of our AI,

“People believe it really can solve a lot of things that it can't. I mean, the unfortunate thing is that OpenAI was amazing. But it was useless. It can't really do anything.”

IEA estimates that, added together, this usage represented almost 2 percent of global energy demand in 2022 — and that demand for these uses could double by 2026

Nearly half (47%) of employees using AI say they have no idea how to achieve the productivity gains their employers expect, and 77% say these tools have actually decreased their productivity and added to their workload.

By introducing new technology into outdated models and systems, organizations are failing to unlock the full productivity value of generative AI across their workforce

bringing together and equipping people with the necessary skills; dispelling the AI aura; and establishing the necessary organizational infrastructure.