How Big Tech is courting Big Oil
Marketplace Tech
American Public Media
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Artificial intelligence, according to its boosters, could help us unlock solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems, like climate change. But in the meantime, it’s become a key tool for fossil fuel companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron to maximize the extraction of emissions-producing oil and gas. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to freelance reporter Karen Hao, who recently wrote in The Atlantic about how Microsoft has actively courted the fossil fuel industry.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Big Tech is selling AI to super size big oil. |
| 0:06.0 | From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Megan McCarty Karino. Artificial intelligence, according to its boosters, could help us unlock solutions to some of the world's toughest problems, like climate change. |
| 0:30.0 | But in the meantime, it's become a key tool for companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron |
| 0:36.4 | to maximize the extraction of emissions producing oil and gas. |
| 0:41.6 | Freelance reporter Karen Howe recently wrote in the Atlantic |
| 0:45.1 | about how Microsoft has actively courted the fossil fuel industry. |
| 0:49.7 | One of the most common promises that the industry at large, but Microsoft in particular makes |
| 0:55.9 | is that these advancements are going to somehow solve climate change. It's going to be really great for the environment it's going to help us confront |
| 1:03.8 | this global crisis that we've been in and have really struggled to confront. |
| 1:07.7 | And what I found was even as Microsoft says this and kind of bolsters its reputation as an AI leader, as a sustainability leader, and also uses this as a way to influence |
| 1:20.4 | policymakers and lobby them to continue allowing Microsoft to do what it's doing. |
| 1:26.0 | It is also literally at the same time selling AI to fossil fuel companies for fossil fuel extraction. So it's not just giving these |
| 1:36.2 | companies access to their technologies in a very neutral way. It is that Microsoft is actively marketing |
| 1:45.8 | to the world's largest fossil fuel producers |
| 1:49.4 | saying that as an AI leader, believe us that this technology that we're developing is going to be great for your business |
| 1:57.6 | because it is going to help you explore, find, and extract more fossil fuels and increase your bottom line. |
| 2:06.0 | Let's talk about some of the AI tools that Microsoft is providing to the fossil fuel industry, what does their technology actually |
| 2:16.2 | help oil and gas industry do? |
| 2:20.0 | So Microsoft provides kind of a suite of different types of tools for the oil and gas industry. |
| 2:26.4 | At a baseline, they provide cloud technologies, which doesn't have anything to do with AI. |
| 2:31.6 | But then on top of that, their Azure cloud platform |
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