The leap in emissions is largely due to energy-guzzling data centers and supply chain emissions necessary to power artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The report estimated that in 2023, Google’s data centers alone account for up to 10% of global data center electricity consumption. Their data center electricity and water consumption both increased 17% between 2022 and 2023.

Google released 14.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide just last year, 13% higher than the year before.

Climate scientists have shown concerns as Big Tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft continue to invest billons of dollars into AI.

  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    These companies 100% said they’d be carbon neutral by 2030 in order to take the wind out of the sails of people pushing for carbon taxes, rather than because they actually intended on doing it.

  • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The stuff about tech companies going carbon neutral or whatever was such bullshit. It was clear this was mostly PR and if there was a need to massively increase carbon emissions (as happened with current “AI” trends), they wouldn’t think twice.

  • Ogmios@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    It would seem that we shall be requiring you peasants to give up another 10% of your daily carbon footprint to meet the demands of our new machine overlord.

  • fluxc0@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    who would have guessed the giant corporation would have lied about something, because we haven’t been lied to before.

  • kenkenken@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    Net-zero in 2030 is a lie. Google, Microsoft, whoever, - doesn’t matter. It’s only five years left. I don’t even think that bigcop can go from increasing carbon emissions to decreasing before 2030.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    So, lets get this straight. Humans are going to die. Animals are going to die. Plants are going to die.

    …so that corporations can make a few easier dollars before this whole planet burns in flames?

    Yes, corporationS. Plural. What? You think google is the only one using AI?