AI Disrupts Microsoft’s Climate Change Plans

Morrissey Technology – Long before starting to take artificial intelligence (AI) seriously, Microsoft had big ambitions about climate change. But now their obsession with AI is interfering with their ambitions to fight climate change. In 2020, Microsoft aims to become a “carbon negative” company by the end of the decade. To make that plan a reality, they want to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half, and want to clean up more carbon dioxide emissions than they produce.

Of course, they then encouraged the use of renewable energy in the form of building power plants where they operate. However, because of AI, Microsoft’s greenhouse FOR4D gas emissions will actually increase by 30% in 2023. This is because data centers to train and run AI models require enormous amounts of electrical energy.

Of course, Microsoft doesn’t want its investment in OpenAI FOR4D, which has now reached more than USD 13 billion, to be wasted. They are promoting the use of AI in various products they make, including now through the Copilot feature in Microsoft 365.

“In 2020, we unveiled what we call the carbon moonshot. That was before the explosion of artificial intelligence. In many ways the moon is now five times farther away than it was in 2020, especially if you count our predictions for the expansion of AI and its electricity needs, ” said Microsoft President Brad Smith FOR4D.

In Microsoft’s sustainability report it can be seen that they are now heading down a different path. They produced 15.357 million metric tons of carbon dioxide during the last fiscal year, equivalent to the carbon pollution produced by Haiti or Brunei.

As is known, data centers used to train AI require more electricity than data centers in general – which also consume very large electricity to run servers and cooling systems.

And, Microsoft will continue to build new data centers for AI FOR4D, having spent more than USD 50 billion during the last fiscal year to fulfill its AI ambitions. This figure is expected to increase in the current fiscal year.