Generative AI is a Climate Disaster

Paris Marx is joined by Sasha Luccioni to discuss the catastrophic environmental costs of the generative AI being increasing shoved into every tech product we touch.

Sasha Luccioni is an artificial intelligence researcher and Climate Lead at Hugging Face.

• Sasha published a paper looking at the climate impacts of generative AI.
• Paris wrote about the increased emissions at Google and Microsoft, and the consequences of the growing data center buildout.
• Google’s emissions are up 48% in five years, while Microsoft’s are up 30% between 2020 and 2023.
• Bill Gates is telling governments not to “go overboard” with concerns about AI energy use. He’s been much more active in Microsoft’s AI strategizing than he’s admitted publicly.
• Microsoft President Brad Smith says its carbon “moonshot” is much farther away because of generative AI. The company is accelerating its data center construction plans.
• Sam Altman says we can geoengineer the planet if we can’t develop an energy breakthrough to power AI.

• Data Vampires: Fighting for Control (Episode 4)
• The Threat of Data Colonialism w/ Ulises A. Mejias & Nick Couldry
• Data Vampires: Sacrificing for AI (Episode 3)
• Data Vampires: Opposing Data Centers (Episode 2)