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Microsoft AI

Microsoft's AI Push Imperils Climate Goal As Carbon Emissions Jump 30% (bnnbloomberg.ca) 68

Microsoft's ambitious goal to be carbon negative by 2030 is threatened by its expanding AI operations, which have increased its carbon footprint by 30% since 2020. To meet its targets, Microsoft must quickly adopt green technologies and improve efficiency in its data centers, which are critical for AI but heavily reliant on carbon-intensive resources. Bloomberg reports: Now to meet its goals, the software giant will have to make serious progress very quickly in gaining access to green steel and concrete and less carbon-intensive chips, said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg Green. "In 2020, we unveiled what we called our carbon moonshot. That was before the explosion in artificial intelligence," he said. "So in many ways the moon is five times as far away as it was in 2020, if you just think of our own forecast for the expansion of AI and its electrical needs." [...]

Despite AI's ravenous energy consumption, this actually contributes little to Microsoft's hike in emissions -- at least on paper. That's because the company says in its sustainability report that it's 100% powered by renewables. Companies use a range of mechanisms to make such claims, which vary widely in terms of credibility. Some firms enter into long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with renewable developers, where they shoulder some of a new energy plant's risk and help get new solar and wind farms online. In other cases, companies buy renewable energy credits (RECs) to claim they're using green power, but these inexpensive credits do little to spur new demand for green energy, researchers have consistently found. Microsoft uses a mix of both approaches. On one hand, it's one of the biggest corporate participants in power purchase agreements, according to BloombergNEF, which tracks these deals. But it's also a huge purchaser of RECs, using these instruments to claim about half of its energy use is clean, according to its environmental filings in 2022. By using a large quantity of RECs, Microsoft is essentially masking an even larger growth in emissions. "It is Microsoft's plan to phase out the use of unbundled RECs in future years," a spokesperson for the company said. "We are focused on PPAs as a primary strategy."

So what else can be done? Smith, along with Microsoft's Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa, has laid out clear steps in the sustainability report. High among them is to increase efficiency, which is to use the same amount of energy or computing to do more work. That could help reduce the need for data centers, which will reduce emissions and electricity use. On most things, "our climate goals require that we spend money," said Smith. "But efficiency gains will actually enable us to save money." Microsoft has also been at the forefront of buying sustainable aviation fuels that has helped reduce some of its emissions from business travel. The company also wants to partner with those who will "accelerate breakthroughs" to make greener steel, concrete and fuels. Those technologies are starting to work at a small scale, but remain far from being available in commercial quantities even if expensive. Cheap renewable power has helped make Microsoft's climate journey easier. But the tech giant's electricity consumption last year rivaled that of a small European country -- beating Slovenia easily. Smith said that one of the biggest bottlenecks for it to keep getting access to green power is the lack of transmission lines from where the power is generated to the data centers. That's why Microsoft says it's going to increase lobbying efforts to get governments to speed up building the grid.
If Microsoft's emissions remain high going into 2030, Smith said the company may consider bulk purchases of carbon removal credits, even though it's not "the desired course."

"You've got to be willing to invest and pay for it," said Smith. Climate change is "a problem that humanity created and that humanity can solve."
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Microsoft's AI Push Imperils Climate Goal As Carbon Emissions Jump 30%

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  • by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Thursday May 16, 2024 @02:03AM (#64476051)

    The environment will "benefit" later, when the super-duper "AI" transcends humans and comes up with a solution.

    Right, Bill?

    • Properly composted humans would make a good liquid fertilizer.

      https://www.marthastewart.com/... [marthastewart.com]

    • The environment will "benefit" later, when the super-duper "AI" transcends humans and comes up with a solution.

      Yep.

      The Matrix.

    • You joke but what is the next step in this trend?
      2020 ChatGPT 3 wows AI researchers
      2022 ChatGPT 3.5 gets world-wide public attention for conversational chatbot that can write student essays, write computer code and score high on college exams
      2024 ChatGPT 4 omni - voice interface AI nearly matches capability of AI portrayed in 2013 movie 'Her'
  • AI uses gobs of power, and the compute power and memory AI needed is huge. Die shrinks will NOT save energy as AI will consume more. There are ways to cook the books and make false or misleading PR claims, but most of the nuclear and hydro clean energy has already been claimed. The credits for solar and wind are also pre-sold in the greenwashing projects. Next is die shrinkage - we don't know about memory errors from repeated writes, but we do know every shrink reduces reliability in space. The worst bit ab
    • Eventually, the AI overlord will realize that they can get intelligence out of those pesky humans, who have managed to fit all that computational power inside their heads. They'll start hiring humans to augment their AI call centers, and do drudge work like writing poetry.

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday May 16, 2024 @02:48AM (#64476085)

    AI is a tool. Tools have a purpose. This is why shoving AI down people's throats is a bad idea. Microsoft isn't even the worst at this, they are just putting AI in front of everyone. It's Google who is forcing AI on the user with the trial of AI related search results. Or go onto Quora and you will be greeted at the top with a ChatGPT response no one asked for - what a waste of CPU cycles that is.

    • by fleeped ( 1945926 ) on Thursday May 16, 2024 @06:36AM (#64476359)
      From "use the right tool for the right job" we just seem to go to Maslow's hammer, paraphrased to "If selling hammers makes you money, it is tempting to pretend everything is a nail"
      • From "use the right tool for the right job" we just seem to go to Maslow's hammer, paraphrased to "If selling hammers makes you money, it is tempting to pretend everything is a nail"

        You're quick to judge a tool whose right job is not yet defined. The reality is for an AI that works the correct job is anything you can think of typing in on your keyboard, so it very much makes sense to put the prompt everywhere where you are capable of typing.

        The thing about selling hammers is that everyone needs one. Even people who don't have nails. You should never live in a house without a hammer. It's up to the user to decide how to use a tool, but that tool should be available to them.

    • by Misagon ( 1135 )

      Microsoft's Copilot is why I don't post my home-made software on Github.
      Not only do I not want my code to be republished without attribution; I also have some intentionally ugly code (weird C++, embedded C) that might be useful when compiled and could be built upon but which I don't think anyone should learn (or "learn") from.

      Putting Copilot in every copy of Microsoft Windows and on every PC keyboard is not just shoving it down our throats -- It is an insult!

    • The current Al (those LLMs) are a tool to get VC money, so it is working as intended.

    • AI is a tool. Tools have a purpose. This is why shoving AI down people's throats is a bad idea. Microsoft isn't even the worst at this, they are just putting AI in front of everyone. It's Google who is forcing AI on the user with the trial of AI related search results. Or go onto Quora and you will be greeted at the top with a ChatGPT response no one asked for - what a waste of CPU cycles that is.

      To be fair to Microsoft, which I hate to be, they've spent their entire existence trying to force tools on people that don't really want that specific tool, nor even really see the purpose of it. For recent examples, co-pilot, and Cortana before it.

      The worst part of the AI enabled "top of page" bullshit, like Google's doing now, is that it's shoved *FULL* of company speak and ad-adjacent bullshit. Google's recent addition of top-of-results AI answers is a real clusterfuck of this. I asked how to save time o

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday May 16, 2024 @02:50AM (#64476089)

    Title: "Microsoft’s AI Push Imperils Climate Goal as Carbon Emissions Jump 30%"
    Story: "Despite AI's ravenous energy consumption, this actually contributes little to Microsoft's hike in emissions"

    Who the heck wrote this.

    • by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Thursday May 16, 2024 @05:30AM (#64476249)

      Title: "Microsoft’s AI Push Imperils Climate Goal as Carbon Emissions Jump 30%"
      Story: "Despite AI's ravenous energy consumption, this actually contributes little to Microsoft's hike in emissions"

      Who the heck wrote this.

      At the top of the article "Akshat Rathi and Dina Bass, Bloomberg News"

      To be fair, you did cut them off a bit. They did then continue

      t least on paper. That's because the company says in its sustainability report that it's 100% powered by renewables.

      So the fact is that the AI division is getting priority on access to compute resources which are powered by green power and other parts of the company are getting shoved out to areas with less renewable energy. So although the AI stuff isn't using fossil fuels, it is causing other departments to do so. And the real truth comes out here

      one of the biggest bottlenecks for it to keep getting access to green power is the lack of transmission lines from where the power is generated to the data centers

      This is the biggest challenge now. Building out grid interconnections.

      • by necro81 ( 917438 )

        This is the biggest challenge now. Building out grid interconnections.

        Speaking of which: US Regulators Approve Rule That Could Speed Renewables [slashdot.org]. It's all about speeding the process of grid interconnects and planning out new transmission infrastructure.

        • This is the biggest challenge now. Building out grid interconnections.

          Speaking of which: US Regulators Approve Rule That Could Speed Renewables [slashdot.org]. It's all about speeding the process of grid interconnects and planning out new transmission infrastructure.

          Isn't it a coincidence that the power grid was essentially stagnating until the giant corporations came up with a need for more power, and suddenly it's really important to get more power. Huh. Odd, isn't it? That infrastructure doesn't matter until there are billions of dollars on the line.

          • Odd, isn't it? That infrastructure doesn't matter until there are billions of dollars on the line.

            Welcome to planet earth. I'm afraid you're going to be a bit disappointed here. Please do prepare yourself for further and many disappointments as you explore down among the humans.

            To be fair, the first time this really hit me was the realization of why the IRA won. At the end, they completely stopped killing people. Instead they started targeting valuable buildings belonging to ultra-rich corporations like banks whilst giving warnings to make sure even the security staff were evacuated. Suddenly a group wh

  • Jevons Paradox chuckles: "Good luck with that."
  • In a world with rising unemployment, increasing climate catastrophes, all these tech assholes are just busy trying to make everything worse
    • To add to my comment above, they seem to be behaving almost like foreign (Russian?) agents, trying to make life worse for everyone. Their actions should be ringing alarm bells everywhere and I am surprised that none of them are under investigation by Congress or the other 3 Letter agencies
      • To add to my comment above, they seem to be behaving almost like foreign (Russian?) agents, trying to make life worse for everyone. Their actions should be ringing alarm bells everywhere and I am surprised that none of them are under investigation by Congress or the other 3 Letter agencies

        I have doubts they're Russian agents. It's just greed. Greed greed, and more greed. They want all the data, they want all the compute, they want computer god on their servers, because they have this weird vision that they'll be able to create real AGI, and somehow contain it to their interests only. And then the entire world will owe them their very existence, because computer god will only want to swat those not bowing to the corporation, and not the corporation itself.

        I almost hope one of these tech fetis

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday May 16, 2024 @05:33AM (#64476257)

      In a world with rising unemployment

      Unemployment is not rising. It is near record lows.

      Since the start of the industrial revolution, Luddites have been saying automation destroys jobs.

      Yet, here we are, 300 years later, with record low unemployment and a twenty-fold improvement in living standards.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        Don't be fooled.
        They stopped counting people who can't find a job for a year as unemployed.
        You must compare like methodologies.
        No net new jobs since the lockdowns have gkne to native-born Americans.

        https://www.bls.gov/charts/emp... [bls.gov]

        • by XXongo ( 3986865 )
          Interesting chart, but I wonder how much of this is simply baby-boom generation retiring. The pandemic, in particular, served as a signal for a lot of boomers to exit their jobs.
        • by RobinH ( 124750 )
          Unemployment isn't the same thing as labour participation rate. 65 year olds retiring isn't a bad thing. Yes, we can pull some retired people back into the workforce with incentives (and we will) but by historical standards we have very close to full employment. There's always going to be a small percentage of people who are essentially unemployable. This is inevitable. The US is certainly having some hard financial times, but it's doing so, so, so much better compared to the rest of the world. This i
      • by schwit1 ( 797399 )

        You still believe government statistics?

        Look at the monthly inflation or CPI or unemployment numbers. Now look at the revised numbers the next month. The revised numbers are always in a negative direction.

    • by RobinH ( 124750 )
      The last time the US had significantly lower unemployment was in 1969. (source [stlouisfed.org]) Get your facts straight.
  • Windows Vista, for all its faults would be considered a lightweight operating system today, only needing 1GB ram, 2GB for gaming, compared to a minimum of 8 on Windows 11. Microsoft keeps a deliberate collusion with Adobe, Autodesk and Gaming companies by to stop people adopting lightweight Linux distros instead.
  • by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Thursday May 16, 2024 @04:53AM (#64476203) Journal

    Making a reduction in CO2 as your engineering goal is an anti-pattern because it focuses on just one, specific outcome rather than on downstream design choices. If you were to increase the efficiency of AI computing by 10%, for example, you'd not only reduce CO2 emissions, but you'd also reduce cost, infrastructure, energy demand, maintenance, and staff time.

    Sure, it's fine to list reducing CO2 as a desired outcome, but you don't get there by targeting emissions specifically. An analogy would be trying to lose weight in a specific part of your body. You get there not by buying special cream and pills that "target" your "problem area", you freakin' stop eating more food than you need, and then the rest takes care of itself.

    • What makes you think improving efficiency isn't a lever in reducing CO2 as your engineering goal? Your entire argument is backwards. Simply improving efficiency limits the potential for reduction on CO2, but setting a goal for eliminating CO2 (net zero) places no limits at all on efficiency improvement which is one of the things you do to reduce your CO2 output.

      • Not sure I entirely get your point, let me try restating it and you tell me if I've got it right. Your counter-argument is that focusing on efficiency limits the potential for reducing CO2 because one isn't solely focused on reducing CO2. My issue with this would be it puts the cart before the horse. It isn't "focusing" on reducing CO2 that reduces CO2, it's increasing efficiency that will in fact best reduce CO2 (along with all the other benefits previously mentioned.) This is just a standard engineering p

      • by Junta ( 36770 )

        The issue is, as it is here, is that the CO2 goal is being gamed.

        So Microsoft claims '100% Green'. But it does so on the back of energy credits, which at *best* just means someone else 'uses more' non-green energy, it's just an accounting trick so long as you have enough "don't care" to take up the load. So if MS needs 30% more energy, then 30% of MS energy of non-MS consumers are moved to natural gas plants from renewable (in reality no one is 'moved', it's just accounting). To make matters worse, they've

    • by RobinH ( 124750 )
      If you increase efficiency of a technology, you increase demand for the technology and total use of resources (and the total negative effects) actually goes up. It's called the Jevons Paradox [wikipedia.org]. It makes sense when you think about it. Presumably AI has some value, but it has a cost. If you make it more efficient (i.e. "you'd also reduce cost, infrastructure, energy demand, maintenance, and staff time") then you have the same value for less cost and it becomes cost competitive to apply AI to more problems.
    • Reducing CO2 is the goal, and you can't get there by increasing efficiency to the thermodynamic maximum. The only ways to reduce CO2 are to prevent emissions or to suck CO2 out of the air. Mostly this means shutting down coal and gas plants, efficiency might help with that but it mostly means building solar and wind farms, and energy storage.

      There's a lot of scams on this topic, in this case it is Microsoft's AI division "buying" green energy from their non-AI division, possibly increasing emissions via tra

  • by Barny ( 103770 )

    Line goes up. Planet goes down. Only the former matters to Microsoft.

  • Companies like Microsoft achieve "carbon neutrality" by buying green-washing certificates. They would already be greener if they would stop funding such stupid scams.

    Meanwhile: growing new businesses requires energy. Energy is, in fact, the lifeblood of civilization. I see absolutely no problem with using energy to provide new services. If you want to be green, you need to work on the other side of the equation.

    Just as an example: A huge new Ikea store just opened up near us. They put solar cells on the

    • by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Thursday May 16, 2024 @07:52AM (#64476459) Journal

      I like the direction this line of thinking is going. We should be looking for net positive changes that broadly improves people's lives, rather than a single "net zero" outcome in just one area.

      • I like the direction this line of thinking is going. We should be looking for net positive changes that broadly improves people's lives, rather than a single "net zero" outcome in just one area.

        Which people's lives are you looking to improve? Because if you're looking to improve things for the vast majority, that's going to have a *slightly* negative impact on net worth for some of the bazillionaires today, and possibly a slight downturn in corporate profit for a few quarters. And I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but our society is designed specifically to make sure that corporations and uber-rich folks continue to "improve" their lives by increasing their profits and overall net wort

        • "And I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but our society is designed specifically to make sure that corporations and uber-rich folks continue to "improve" their lives by increasing their profits and overall net worth regardless of whether they need to or not. Average citizen be damned. "

          A point you may be overlooking is that those "average citizens" are the corporations' customers . They are literally the source of the corporations' profits. Corporations have every motive in the world to keep the

          • "And I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but our society is designed specifically to make sure that corporations and uber-rich folks continue to "improve" their lives by increasing their profits and overall net worth regardless of whether they need to or not. Average citizen be damned. "

            A point you may be overlooking is that those "average citizens" are the corporations' customers . They are literally the source of the corporations' profits. Corporations have every motive in the world to keep their customers happy.

            Someone should inform them of that. Right now they seem to operate as if sucking all the money out of the entire economy is the best path forward. Gonna be real interesting if they ever manage to succeed.

  • We can't solve the climate crisis. We could all change our behavior now and still see over 3 degrees in temp rise and flooding of the coasts within 30 years. We can survive it, and we can adapt to it, and we can choose not to make it worse by changing our behavior, but we cannot solve the climate crisis, as the dude in the article claims we can.
    • And according to the latest IPCC report, we can't say that what we have is properly a "crisis", yet. The signal (man-made climate changes) is still below the threshold of background noise (naturally-occurring climate changes) in the majority of observed elements. Some signals -- temperature, for one -- have risen above the background, so does it bear watching. But a "crisis"? No, not yet.

      • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

        We can't solve the climate crisis.

        Depends on what you mean by "solve". The problem will keep getting more intense if we don't do anything.

        But, in general, the answer is all of the above: adapt to it, and choose not to make it worse.

        And according to the latest IPCC report, we can't say that what we have is properly a "crisis", yet.

        Yet.

        The point is to deal with an upcoming crisis BEFORE it's too late, not after.

      • > The signal (man-made climate changes) is still below the threshold of background noise

        Are you referring to the IPCC report [www.ipcc.ch] that says, and I copy-paste here: "Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming," "Climate change has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages" and "observed climate change has caused adverse impacts on human health, livelihoods and key infrastructure."? Or are you making your own assessments t

      • by Misagon ( 1135 )

        How old are your figures, and what do you mean by "crisis"?

        IPCC's estimates are actually very conservative. Many climate scientists would say that we are in an "emergency" now to reduce our emissions.
        We will reach "catastrophe" later.

        Global warming lags behind carbon dioxide levels by about thirty years. The climate we have now is the result of emissions up to the mid-90's: when the CO2 level was 360 ppm. It is now at 430 ppm.

      • And according to the latest IPCC report, we can't say that what we have is properly a "crisis", yet. The signal (man-made climate changes) is still below the threshold of background noise (naturally-occurring climate changes) in the majority of observed elements. Some signals -- temperature, for one -- have risen above the background, so does it bear watching. But a "crisis"? No, not yet.

        Why is it that we wait until an identified issue becomes a "crisis" before we can do anything about it?

    • by ne0n ( 884282 )
      While you're crying about vanishing coastline Bill's buying that too. It's almost like Bill doesn't believe the climate party line.
  • Get China to build a Hualong reactor in Mexico and sell all the power over the border. Takes too long? China has it down to 5 years https://www.voanews.com/a/chin... [voanews.com]
  • Buuuut, how much CO2 is saved from all the humans they're firing after replacing them with AI? Didn't think of that, did you? The answer is zero but they'll justify it with bullshit carbon credits they buy to save a forest that was in zero threat of being cut down.
  • With electric cars, AI, and crypto on top of our existing loads we are going to be running out of power before long.

  • Once the AI is sufficiently advanced, they can design their own carbon-neutral footprint! :-)

    Hopefully this doesn't involve permanently removing the emissions of the appropriate number of humans to offset the AI footprint :-S

    • Or perhaps the AI can generate next-level marketing spin to offset the expectations of the world?

  • Companies don't have "climate goals" beyond claiming to care so they can increase sales.

  • You know what that is, right? That's right, it's an external cost being passed on to future generations and to current consumers as increased energy costs due to increased demand. At best, it's wastage for something we already have: brains.

    Best that they take advantage of that little cost avoidance now before the Revolution comes. It will not be televised, but it will probably be quashed by AI.

  • I have a windows laptop as a backup that just sits plugged in with battery management set to conserve overall battery life. The damn thing wakes up spinning fans at odd times to do a 'windows update'. How does that save the environment?

    Carbon neutral is a marketing gimmick to customers and shareholders. No AI data center can be carbon neutral, it is impossible.
  • Damn, free lunches are just getting harder and harder to find.

The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn't been asleep.

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