A recent environmental report from Google shows that the company's carbon emissions have risen nearly 50% in the past five years, making it more difficult to achieve its goal of eliminating carbon emissions by 2030, due to its integration of AI into many of its core products.
According to the latest environmental report from Google, the company's carbon emissions have risen nearly 50% in the past five years due to its integration of AI into many of its core products, making it more difficult to achieve its goal of eliminating carbon emissions by 2030.
A report released on Tuesday shows that Google's total greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 amounted to 14.3 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, up 48% from 2019 and 13% from 2022. Google said that the increase in energy consumption of its data centers and the carbon emissions of its supply chain were the main culprits. The company also added that its efforts to incorporate AI into its products could make it more difficult to reduce carbon emissions in the future.
In the report, Google stated that reducing carbon emissions could be challenging as they integrate AI into their products, as the increased computing power of AI would increase energy demand and their investments in technology infrastructure are expected to increase carbon emissions.
A recent survey by the media shows that AI, especially generative AI, is extremely resource-intensive. As AI technology rapidly develops, more and more data centers are needed to build and operate AI. The practices of major technology companies to develop AI at all costs may lead to a surge in electricity demand, which could undermine America's energy transition plan and the environmental goals of major technology companies.
It is worth noting that Google is not the first large technology company to see the rapid development of AI as a barrier to achieving environmental goals. In May of this year, Microsoft stated that its carbon emissions had increased by 30% since 2020 due to its increasing investment in AI, making it more difficult to achieve its goal of net zero emissions by 2030.
Sasha Luccioni, Climate Director at startup Hugging Face Inc., said that technology companies did not anticipate the massive growth of AI when setting environmental goals. "These companies are somewhat unprepared for how much energy it takes to build and allow this technology," he said.