Diksia.com - Long before Microsoft started taking artificial intelligence (AI) seriously, it had big ambitions around climate change. But now her obsession with AI is affecting her ambitions to fight climate change.
In 2020, Microsoft aims to become a “carbon negative” company by the end of this decade. To put this plan into action, they want to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half and eliminate more carbon dioxide emissions than they produce.
Of course, they then promoted the use of renewable energy by building power plants where they operate.
However, because of AI, Microsoft’s greenhouse gas emissions will actually increase by 30% in 2023. This is because data centers require enormous amounts of electrical energy to train and operate AI models.
Of course, Microsoft doesn’t want its investment in OpenAI, which has now reached more than $13 billion, to go to waste. They promote the use of AI in various products they produce, now including through the Copilot feature in Microsoft 365.
“In 2020, we unveiled what we call the Carbon Moonshot. This was before the explosion of artificial intelligence. In many ways, the “moon is now five times further away than it was in 2020, especially when you count our predictions for the expansion of AI and power needs,” said Microsoft President Brad Smith.
Microsoft’s sustainability report shows that it is now taking a different path. They produced 15.357 million tons of carbon dioxide in the last fiscal year, equivalent to the carbon pollution of Haiti or Brunei.
As is well known, data centers used to train AI require more power than data centers in general – which also use a lot of power to run servers and cooling systems.
And Microsoft will continue to build new AI data centers after spending more than $50 billion in the last fiscal year to realize its AI ambitions. This number is expected to increase in the current financial year.
