Google blamed artificial intelligence for increasing carbon emissions

Google In part Artificial intelligence has been blamed for the company’s continued rise in carbon pollution over the past year, undermining the search engine’s commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.

“Reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is a very ambitious goal and we know it won’t be easy,” the company acknowledged in its annual report released on Tuesday.

“Our strategy will continue to evolve and we will need to recognize significant uncertainties, including uncertainty regarding the future environmental impact of artificial intelligence,” the statement added. is complex and difficult to predict.’

The company, which uses artificial intelligence to overhaul core products like its search engine and Google Workspace, sees carbon emissions rise 13 percent between 2022 and 2023, up 48 percent from its base year of 2019.

Google argues in the report that there are some environmental improvements to be made. The company said its data centers are 1.8 times more energy efficient than those of its competitors, and the company touted the possibility of using artificial intelligence for environmental solutions such as energy-efficient transit routing and extreme weather modeling. Emphasized.

Another part of the report said that artificial intelligence might be crucial to climate change.

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“In fact artificial intelligence has the potential to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by five to 10 percent by 2030.”

Google’s peers are also struggling to curb their carbon footprint.

Microsoft revealed in May that the company’s carbon footprint has increased by 29% since 2020.

Amazon, which did not disclose its 2022-23 figures, said carbon emissions fell by a modest 0.4 percent between 2021 and 2022, although emissions were up nearly 40 percent overall from 2019.

Energy officials have warned that the development of artificial intelligence will put pressure on the energy grid and the climate.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global data center electricity demand will double between 2022 and 2026.

According to the IEA, data center electricity use in the US will increase by 50% over the same period.

Fengqi Yu, a professor of energy engineering at Cornell University, told ABC News: ‘The growth trend is very fast and that’s something I’m concerned regarding.’