Greater, newer AI models come with environmental impacts
Marketplace Tech
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
Back in 2020, Microsoft made an ambitious pledge to go carbon negative by 2030. But that plan is encountering some headwinds, according to its latest sustainability report. It showed Microsoft’s carbon emissions have increased by 30% since it made that pledge four years ago and comes a reminder of the significant environmental cost of the AI boom. Just how significant? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked Emma Strubell, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who co-wrote a paper about the specific energy demands for common uses of this technology.
Transcript
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| 1:15.0 | Available now on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. The AI Boom is leading to a CO2 boom. From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carino. Back in 2020, |
| 1:45.0 | 2020, Microsoft made an ambitious pledge that the company would go carbon negative by 2030. |
| 1:51.0 | But the plan to erase its carbon footprint and then some is |
| 1:54.7 | encountering some headwinds according to its latest sustainability report. It |
| 1:59.4 | showed Microsoft's carbon emissions have actually increased by 30% since it made that pledge four years ago, |
| 2:06.4 | as it accrues more semiconductors and builds more data centers that power generative artificial intelligence. |
| 2:14.4 | The report came as a reminder of the significant environmental cost of the AI boom. |
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