• Public

  • Public
  • Network
  • Groups
  • Featured
  • Popular
  • People

Audiogram with Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 logo, title: "Episode 43: AI Companies Gamble with Everyone's Planet” and subtitle “The AI gold rush relies on massive data centers with a soaring cost -- from local water, to the global climate.” PARIS MARX: I feel like every month there's a story about a new community in the United States, let alone what's happening around the world, that is dealing with the consequences of building these massive hyperscale data centers. In particular, these companies basically just moving in, expecting to use all this energy and all this water, and communities being like, wait, what does this mean for us? And of course, then we see on the bigger picture what these companies are actually doing and how willing they are to sacrifice climate targets and so much else just to pursue this vision that they have. And just to add one more thing about Microsoft in particular, in 2020, they talked about taking a carbon moonshot, right? They were going to be carbon negative by 2030. But then Brad Smith, the president, he gave this, this interview a few months ago where he was basically saying that they declared this carbon moonshot in 2020, but now the moon is five times further away. And it's like, okay, you're admitting that you're not going to reach it, but what does that mean for all the rest of us, you know? EMILY M. BENDER: Yeah. And so passive, like, oops, the moon, the moon went further away. It's like no, actually, you made some decisions.