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Karen Hao reviews on the hypocrisy of the tech large.Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Getty.September 13, 2024, 4:55 PM ET That is Atlantic Intelligence, a publication during which our writers enable you to wrap your thoughts round synthetic intelligence and a brand new machine age. Join right here.At this time, The Atlantic revealed a brand new investigation by contributing author Karen Hao detailing Microsoft’s latest engagements with the oil and gasoline industries. Though the tech large has spoken of the potential for AI to remake our world for the higher and stave off local weather change, behind the scenes, it has sought to market the expertise to fossil-fuel corporations to help in drilling, amongst different functions. Karen spoke with 15 present and former Microsoft workers and skim by a whole bunch of inner paperwork for her report.Basically, this can be a story about pressure—between two factors of view inside Microsoft, and between the supposed promise of a expertise and its precise makes use of within the right here and now. Sustainability advocates inside Microsoft have clashed with management over its pursuit of this enterprise. And though Microsoft has maintained that AI might be used to make fossil-fuel corporations extra environment friendly, thereby making their work extra sustainable, critics aren’t so certain. “The concept that AI’s local weather advantages will outpace its environmental prices is essentially speculative,” Karen writes, “particularly on condition that generative-AI instruments are themselves tremendously resource-hungry. Inside the subsequent six years, the info facilities required to develop and run the sorts of next-generation AI fashions that Microsoft is investing in might use extra energy than all of India. They are going to be cooled by hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. All of the whereas, scientists agree, the world will get hotter,...
Karen Hao reviews on the hypocrisy of the tech large.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Getty.
That is Atlantic Intelligence, a publication during which our writers enable you to wrap your thoughts round synthetic intelligence and a brand new machine age. Join right here.
At this time, The Atlantic revealed a brand new investigation by contributing author Karen Hao detailing Microsoft’s latest engagements with the oil and gasoline industries. Though the tech large has spoken of the potential for AI to remake our world for the higher and stave off local weather change, behind the scenes, it has sought to market the expertise to fossil-fuel corporations to help in drilling, amongst different functions. Karen spoke with 15 present and former Microsoft workers and skim by a whole bunch of inner paperwork for her report.
Basically, this can be a story about pressure—between two factors of view inside Microsoft, and between the supposed promise of a expertise and its precise makes use of within the right here and now. Sustainability advocates inside Microsoft have clashed with management over its pursuit of this enterprise. And though Microsoft has maintained that AI might be used to make fossil-fuel corporations extra environment friendly, thereby making their work extra sustainable, critics aren’t so certain. “The concept that AI’s local weather advantages will outpace its environmental prices is essentially speculative,” Karen writes, “particularly on condition that generative-AI instruments are themselves tremendously resource-hungry. Inside the subsequent six years, the info facilities required to develop and run the sorts of next-generation AI fashions that Microsoft is investing in might use extra energy than all of India. They are going to be cooled by hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. All of the whereas, scientists agree, the world will get hotter, its local weather extra excessive.”
Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic: Sources: Getty.
Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI
By Karen Hao
Microsoft executives have been considering currently in regards to the finish of the world. In a white paper revealed late final yr, Brad Smith, the corporate’s vice chair and president, and Melanie Nakagawa, its chief sustainability officer, described a “planetary disaster” that AI might assist resolve. Think about an AI-assisted device that helps cut back meals waste, to call one instance from the doc, or some future expertise that might “expedite decarbonization” by utilizing AI to invent new designs for inexperienced tech.
However as Microsoft makes an attempt to buoy its popularity as an AI chief in local weather innovation, the corporate can be promoting its AI to fossil-fuel corporations. Lots of of pages of inner paperwork I’ve obtained, plus interviews I’ve performed over the previous yr with 15 present and former workers and executives, present that the tech large has sought to market the expertise to corporations corresponding to ExxonMobil and Chevron as a strong device for locating and creating new oil and gasoline reserves and maximizing their manufacturing—all whereas publicly committing to dramatically cut back emissions.
Final week, I went viral on X and Threads after utilizing generative AI to switch each icon on my cellphone’s residence display screen with a bespoke picture of Kermit the Frog. I wrote in regards to the expertise—and what it reveals about AI—for The Atlantic.
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