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[...] as Microsoft attempts to buoy its reputation as an AI leader in climate innovation, the company is also selling its AI to fossil-fuel companies. [...] the tech giant has sought to market the technology to companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron as a powerful tool for finding and developing new oil and gas reserves and maximizing their production—all while publicly committing to dramatically reduce emissions.
Although tech companies have long done business with the fossil-fuel industry, Microsoft’s case is notable. It demonstrates how the AI boom contributes to one of the most pressing issues facing our planet today—despite the fact that the technology is often lauded for its supposed potential to improve our world, as when Sam Altman testified to Congress that it could address issues such as “climate change and curing cancer.”
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For years, Microsoft routinely promoted its work with companies such as Schlumberger, Chevron, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Baker Hughes, and Shell. Around 2020, the same year Microsoft made ambitious climate commitments that included a goal to reach carbon negativity by 2030, the tech firm grew quieter about such partnerships and focused on messaging about the transition to net zero. Behind the scenes, Microsoft has continued to seek business from the fossil-fuel industry; documents related to its overall pitch strategy show that it has sought energy-industry business in part by marketing the abilities to optimize and automate drilling and to maximize oil and gas production. Over the past year, it has leaned into the generative-AI rush in an effort to clinch more deals—each of which can be worth more than hundreds of millions of dollars. Microsoft employees have noted that the oil and gas industries could represent a market opportunity of $35 billion to $75 billion annually, according to documents I viewed.
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From a business perspective, of course, Microsoft’s pursuit of massive deals with fossil-fuel companies makes sense. And such partnerships do not necessarily mean that the company is contradicting its climate commitments. Microsoft executives have made the case that AI can also help fossil-fuel companies improve their environmental footprint.
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The idea that AI’s climate benefits will outpace its environmental costs is largely speculative, however, especially given that generative-AI tools are themselves tremendously resource-hungry. Within the next six years, the data centers required to develop and run the kinds of next-generation AI models that Microsoft is investing in may use more power than all of India. They will be cooled by millions upon millions of gallons of water. All the while, scientists agree, the world will get warmer, its climate more extreme.
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Microsoft isn’t a company that exists to fight climate change, and it doesn’t have to assume responsibility for saving our planet. Yet the company is trying to convince the public that by investing in a technology that is also being used to enrich fossil-fuel companies, society will be better equipped to resolve the environmental crisis. Some of the company’s own employees described this idea to me as ridiculous. To these workers, Microsoft’s energy contracts demonstrate only the unsavory reality of how the company’s AI investments are actually used.
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