Leading voices in artificial intelligence have made bold claims about AI’s potential to tackle climate change. But experts caution that such optimism is premature and may distract from urgent action needed today.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have all suggested that generative AI could be instrumental to solving the climate crisis. They argue that artificial intelligence will eventually be able to develop cleaner energy solutions, carbon capture methods, and even lab-grown meat. However, critics argue that these ideas are largely speculative and disregard the growing environmental footprint of the very AI technologies being promoted.

“It’s not at all obvious that generative AI is going to help solve climate change,” said Alex de Vries, founder of Digiconomist, a platform focused on technology’s environmental impact. “Quite the opposite.”

Generative AI, including large-language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude, requires massive computing power and vast amounts of data to operate. Training these models alone consumes significant energy and leads to increased greenhouse gas emissions. The energy cost doesn't end with training; every interaction with a chatbot or image generator also draws power.

According to McKinsey, data centers accounted for 3.7% of U.S. energy consumption in 2023, with projections rising to 11.7% by 2030. Globally, data center energy use has increased by 12% annually since 2017 and is expected to more than double by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.

Despite these rising emissions, tech leaders remain optimistic. At a 2023 AI event in Washington, Schmidt argued that AI offers the best hope for climate progress: “I’d rather bet on AI solving the problem, than constraining its development and having the problem anyway,” he said.

Altman, in a blog post titled The Intelligence Age, has envisioned an AI "superintelligence" that would transform society and “fix the climate.” Amodei echoed this in his blog, Machines of Loving Grace, predicting AI could help make climate mitigation “far less costly and disruptive.”

Read More: Climate Technology: The Path to Net Zero and Sustainability

But climate and technology researchers remain skeptical. They point out that many existing, low-emission technologies, such as solar panels, electric vehicles, and heat pumps, can already reduce dependence on fossil fuels. What’s lacking, they say, is not futuristic AI but the political will to implement change.

“Advocates of AI are willing to accept certain harm now in favor of speculative future benefits,” said Jathan Sadowski, a senior lecturer at Monash University. He added that energy-efficient AI applications, such as those used in climate modeling or energy grid optimization, are very different from energy-hungry generative AI systems.

Even AI’s supposed breakthrough abilities are under question. Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, said that chatbots like ChatGPT merely predict what word comes next in a sentence based on training data. “It’s basically the same thing as a Magic 8 ball,” she said. “Are we going to have a Magic 8 ball solving climate change for us? I don’t think so.”

Meanwhile, companies like Microsoft and Google have acknowledged that their emissions are increasing, and some are revising their reduction targets. Although AI boosters suggest nuclear energy will eventually meet the growing power needs, experts warn that new nuclear plants are years away. In the short term, utilities are extending the life of coal plants and considering new gas facilities to meet demand.

Also Read: The Growing Need for ESG Companies, Sustainability, and Climate Solutions

Ultimately, while AI can play a supportive role in some aspects of climate research, critics argue that betting on generative AI to lead the charge may be more fantasy than fact.

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Source: San Francisco Examiner