Claims That AI Can Help Fix Climate Dismissed As Greenwashing (theguardian.com) 41
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Tech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown, according to a report. Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not the energy-hungry chatbots and image generation tools driving the sector's explosive growth of gas-guzzling datacenters, the analysis of 154 statements found.
The research, commissioned by nonprofits including Beyond Fossil Fuels and Climate Action Against Disinformation, did not find a single example where popular tools such as Google's Gemini or Microsoft's Copilot were leading to a "material, verifiable, and substantial" reduction in planet-heating emissions. Ketan Joshi, an energy analyst and author of the report, said the industry's tactics were "diversionary" and relied on tried and tested methods that amount to "greenwashing."
He likened it to fossil fuel companies advertising their modest investments in solar panels and overstating the potential of carbon capture. "These technologies only avoid a minuscule fraction of emissions relative to the massive emissions of their core business," said Joshi. "Big tech took that approach and upgraded and expanded it." [...] Joshi said the discourse around AI's climate benefits needed to be "brought back to reality." "The false coupling of a big problem and a small solution serves as a distraction from the very preventable harms being done through unrestricted datacenter expansion," he said.
The research, commissioned by nonprofits including Beyond Fossil Fuels and Climate Action Against Disinformation, did not find a single example where popular tools such as Google's Gemini or Microsoft's Copilot were leading to a "material, verifiable, and substantial" reduction in planet-heating emissions. Ketan Joshi, an energy analyst and author of the report, said the industry's tactics were "diversionary" and relied on tried and tested methods that amount to "greenwashing."
He likened it to fossil fuel companies advertising their modest investments in solar panels and overstating the potential of carbon capture. "These technologies only avoid a minuscule fraction of emissions relative to the massive emissions of their core business," said Joshi. "Big tech took that approach and upgraded and expanded it." [...] Joshi said the discourse around AI's climate benefits needed to be "brought back to reality." "The false coupling of a big problem and a small solution serves as a distraction from the very preventable harms being done through unrestricted datacenter expansion," he said.
The problem is not AI but who owns AI (Score:5, Insightful)
the upper class will continue to use corporate AI in order to maintain their control over the rest of us, the powerful will use every means at their disposal in order to maintain and increase their power
these irresponsible rich people live in a affluent fueled fantasy and they have no idea how incompetent they really are as they drive society over the cliff
it was fun while it lasted
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you even actually read the report? This is Slashdot, so my money is on "no". Do you even know who the authors are? For example, Friends of the Earth is highly anti-tech, famous for example for protesting demanding the closure of nuclear plants, against mining (in general), against logging (in general), they've protested wind farms on NIMBY grounds, etc. Basically anti-growth.
The report is a long series of bait and switches.
Talking about how "data centres" consume 1,5% of global electricity. But AI i
Re:The problem is not AI but who owns AI (Score:4, Informative)
Talking about how "data centres" consume 1,5% of global electricity. But AI is only a small fraction of that (Bitcoin is the largest fraction).
I don't think this is true. You didn't cite any sources for your claims, so I went searching to see what I could find. This article [technologyreview.com] from MIT Technology Review goes into a lot of detail about AI energy use. Here's a relevant passage.
This isn't simply the norm of a digital world. It's unique to AI, and a marked departure from Big Tech's electricity appetite in the recent past. From 2005 to 2017, the amount of electricity going to data centers remained quite flat thanks to increases in efficiency, despite the construction of armies of new data centers to serve the rise of cloud-based online services, from Facebook to Netflix. In 2017, AI began to change everything. Data centers started getting built with energy-intensive hardware designed for AI, which led them to double their electricity consumption by 2023. The latest reports show that 4.4% of all the energy in the US now goes toward data centers.
This article [substack.com] also gives some detailed numbers:
It's difficult to precisely disentangle how much of the tech sector's electricity is because of AI, since data centers handle many kinds of workloads. What is clear is that data center energy use is rising sharply, largely due to the AI boom. In 2024, US data centers consumed about 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity; over 4% of all US power use that year. To put that in perspective, that's roughly as much electricity as the entire country of Pakistan uses in a year, and the trajectory is steeply upward. By 2030, US data centers' power draw is projected to more than double to around 426 TWh, barring major efficiency breakthroughs. The Department of Energy anticipates data centers' share of US electricity could reach 6.7 to 12% by 2028, up from about 4.4% in 2023.
AI is not a "small fraction" of data center use. It's the dominant force driving a huge increase in power consumption.
Making some distinction between "generative AI" and "traditional AI".
If you don't like their terminology, let's say "consumer AI" to avoid the technical distinction of what is or isn't a generative model. The distinction they make is completely valid. The rise of consumer AI products like chatbots and image generators is new and very different from the older traditional applications. Those products are driving the majority of growth in AI power use. They also provide zero climate benefit. The claimed sources of emissions reductions do not come from these consumer products.
Re: (Score:2)
You yourself clearly don't even believe what you're writing. You keep getting mad at the claim that AI isn't (present tense) a large chunk of data centre power usage and pushing back against it, but then trying to counter that by talking about growth trends. Either you yourself (A) understand the fact that AI *isn't* where most datacentre power is used and are pointing at trends as a distraction, or (B) you don't understand the difference between a fraction and a growth trend.
Your own citations furthermor
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're confused about who you're replying to. You quoted parts of my post, but your reply doesn't seem to have much to do with what I said.
You keep getting mad at the claim that AI isn't (present tense) a large chunk of data centre power usage
I'm not getting mad at anything. I began, "I don't think this is true," and then cited some articles that contradict it. I'm not sure how you would interpret that as getting mad.
but then trying to counter that by talking about growth trends.
The passages I quoted discussed current use (or rather, recent past use in 2023 and 2024). The full articles have much much more detail about current use. Don't take my word for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Your response begins not by engaging the substance of the report, but by questioning whether I read it and by attacking the credibility of the authors. Pointing out that Friends of the Earth has historically taken anti-nuclear or anti-growth positions does not, by itself, invalidate the data or analysis in the report. An organization’s prior stance on unrelated policy matters does not automatically make its current claims false. If the report contains errors, those errors should be demonstrated direct
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Your post appears to have been written by an AI - you appear to have pasted my post into an AI and asked it "write a rebuttal". Unlike with the other (human) poster, I will not respond until you own up to it.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're just going to dodge the issue by claiming any response is just written by an AI. Nice try. All my points are valid and enough said.
When you have a thoughtful response to the issues we're discussing, let me know, thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
I notice a distinct lack of a denial, combined with a lack of an admission.
I do not debate with people who cannot be honest.
Re: (Score:2)
no, you just cannot debate so you label your opponent as dishonest and use that as an excuse to avoid discussing the issue
i'd like to point out that's typical confrontational and one-sided behavior
just saying
Re: (Score:2)
Once again: I notice a distinct lack of denial nor admission.
You will get a response if you ever show yourself to be a remotely honest person.
Re: (Score:2)
typical abusive answer from a troll
you've earned becoming a foe of mine, well done
in my opinion, it's all the people just like you who are the real problem
Re: (Score:2)
given how long you've been here you should be old enough to know how to behave in public
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still can't reply to my post? just shows how wrong you are that you can't defend your abusive comments
Re: The problem is not AI but who owns AI (Score:4)
Oligarchy ... is the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
agreed
pardon pun
Yeah, it can fix Climate by continvoucly morging (Score:5, Interesting)
Claims that Generative AI can help solve the energy problem or find a cure for cancer sound so stupid. Generative AI can only "create" bad copies of what already exists.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Yeah, it can fix Climate by continvoucly morgi (Score:3)
LLMs are just a computerized Mad Libs [wikipedia.org]
Re:Yeah, it can fix Climate by continvoucly morgin (Score:5, Interesting)
Marketing BS (Score:2)
I am so sick and tired of all this disinformation.
Even if it had been obvious to every adult with at least half a brain that the claim had been the verbal equivalent to bovine do-do from the start, disinformation such as this is wasting everyone's time, money and energy to process.
The people behind that claim should be severely fined and locked up. And anyone who were fooled to believe it should be forced to return to kindergarten.
We have to destroy the planet to save it (Score:2)
Max consumerism, if we buy / use a product that they sell, it'll save the environment. Watching videos of how products are made (like GPUs), its an energy intensive process that in a circular way requires machines that they themselves took a lot of energy to make (heating up recycling/ore and making anything uses a lot of energy). Its hard to differentiate between products that overall will result in less damage to the environment, and the marketing dept hype that preys on people's emotion.
Re: We have to destroy the planet to save it (Score:2)
We could always add a death penalty to commercial advertising and marketing. That would solve a bunch of problems with hype, consumer choice, misinformation, and waste.
Power (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
You beat me to it! All these years, we have been finding new ways to use either less energy or be more efficient about it. Now, suddenly, here comes a new segment of the IT industry that needs to hog power 24/7/365, and nobody amongst the Greenies is out there protesting against it. Since the bulk of Leftists there in the world today work in the tech sector and are enthralled by this very trend - AI! Just look at Mozilla, which today is not about web browsers, email clients or other internet related sof
Only those in power can fix climate (Score:2)
AI does nothing on its own (Score:4)
"AI can fix the climate" "AI can cure cancer."
No you pillocks. AI can't do these things anymore than a book can do these things. You need people, and materials. Maybe they'll follow instructions from a book, but the book itself is inert. Furthermore, it takes a person to pick the book and distribute it.
If there's nobody willing to gather the people and commit the materials, there is no cure for climate or cancer or whatever thing you're responsible for. Eventually you'll have to do the work.
Yes, Datacenters can fix the climate (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, let's use AI, which consumes enormous amounts of power we don;t have, vast tracts of land we have to clear away, level and build on and huge amounts of water to cool all the heat it generates.
Let's use this resource hungry thing to help us find ways to use less resources to save the planet.
Perhaps we can start by not using this resource hungry thing in the first place. The first "R" is Reduce, which means you use less of it. Using less power, land and water by not building unnecessary data centers seems to be the best place to start.
but it can (Score:2)
AGI will (Score:2)
AGI will be super powerful, super intelligent, super human, and it will finally provide us with the solution:
1. stop fossil emissions now
2. start massive CDR with exponential growth patterns now
Re: (Score:2)
2. start massive CDR with exponential growth patterns now
Glad to see that the plan includes a Critical Design Review.
Re: (Score:2)
with CDR i obviously meant the CorelDRAW file format!
AI Could fix all sorts of things... (Score:3)
If only the billionaires would allow it to happen. We could put a group of freshmen high school students into a room and they could very well also provide us with viable solutions to our problems. The exact same billionaires would block those efforts as well.
Let's face it, many of our "problems" are only problems because the .01% won't let us fix things.
As likely as...... (Score:3)
kysses (Score:1)
the left wing is as stupid as the right on certain subjects
Blatant (Score:2)
Hyperscale datacenters are increasing climate change.
Turn me off (Score:3)
If the AI takes on all of the available data and doesn't come back with a "turn me off" recommendation, then the AI isn't doing a good job of understanding the data, nor its own power and cooling requirements.
We already know how to solve the climate crisis (Score:2)
What are the different LLM's answers on solving the climate crisis so far? I can only use corporate approved AI tools for work things, so I haven't asked them yet.
x.AI will probably say the climate crisis is a hoax.