Claims that AI can help fix climate dismissed as greenwashing | AI (artificial intelligence)

Tech Giants Accused of Greenwashing AI’s Climate Impact, Report Finds

In a scathing new report, tech companies are being accused of deliberately conflating traditional artificial intelligence with energy-intensive generative AI to falsely claim the technology could help avert climate breakdown. The analysis, commissioned by environmental nonprofits including Beyond Fossil Fuels and Climate Action Against Disinformation, scrutinized 154 statements from industry leaders and found that most claims about AI’s climate benefits refer to machine learning—not the power-hungry chatbots and image generators driving explosive growth in gas-guzzling data centers.

Key Findings:

• No Verifiable Emissions Reductions: The report found zero examples where popular tools like Google’s Gemini or Microsoft’s Copilot have led to “material, verifiable, and substantial” reductions in planet-heating emissions.
• Greenwashing Tactics: Energy analyst Ketan Joshi, author of the report, likened the industry’s tactics to fossil fuel companies overstating the potential of carbon capture while advertising modest investments in solar panels. “These technologies only avoid a minuscule fraction of emissions relative to the massive emissions of their core business,” Joshi said.
• Muddled AI Definitions: The report argues that tech giants are misleadingly presenting climate solutions and carbon pollution as a package deal by “muddling” types of AI. Most claims scrutinized came from an International Energy Agency (IEA) report and corporate reports from Google and Microsoft.
• Weak Evidence: Only 26% of the green claims studied cited published academic research, while 36% cited no evidence at all. One widely repeated claim—that AI could help mitigate 5-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030—traced back to a 2021 blog post by a consulting firm, not independent research.

Industry Response:

Google defended its claims, stating they are “based on a robust substantiation process grounded in the best available science.” Microsoft declined to comment, and the IEA did not respond to requests for comment.

Expert Commentary:

Sasha Luccioni, AI and climate lead at Hugging Face, emphasized the need for nuance in the debate. “When we talk about AI that’s relatively bad for the planet, it’s mostly generative AI and large language models,” she said. “When we talk about AI that’s ‘good’ for the planet, it’s often predictive models, extractive models, or old-school AI models.”

The Bigger Picture:

Data centers currently consume just 1% of the world’s electricity, but their share of U.S. electricity is projected to more than double to 8.6% by 2035, according to BloombergNEF. The IEA predicts they will account for at least 20% of the rich world’s growth in electricity demand by the end of the decade. While a simple text query to a large language model like ChatGPT may use as little energy as running a lightbulb for a minute, complex functions like video generation and deep research consume far more power, raising concerns among energy researchers about the speed and scale of growth.

Joshi called for the discourse around AI’s climate benefits to be “brought back to reality.” He warned that “the false coupling of a big problem and a small solution serves as a distraction from the very preventable harms being done through unrestricted data center expansion.”

Tags: AI, Climate Change, Greenwashing, Tech Industry, Data Centers, Carbon Emissions, Machine Learning, Generative AI, Environmental Impact, Tech Giants, Google, Microsoft, IEA, Climate Action, Sustainable Technology, Energy Consumption, Tech Ethics, Climate Solutions, AI Hype, Environmental Misinformation, Tech Accountability

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