Power hungry How great a threat is AI to the climate?

The datacentres behind the new technology are polluting the natural world - and some experts fear the exponential rise in demand could derail the shift to a clean economy

- Ajit Niranjan

During a golden sunset in Memphis last May, Sharon Wilson pointed a thermal imaging camera at Elon Musk's flagship datacentre to reveal a planetary threat her eyes could not. Free from pollution controls, the gas-fired turbines that power the world's biggest AI supercomputer were pumping invisible fumes into the Tennessee sky.

"It was jaw-dropping," said Wilson, a former oil and gas worker from Texas who has documented methane releases for more than a decade and estimates xAI's Colossus datacentre was spewing more of the planet-heating gas than a large power plant.

That same week, the facility's core product was running riot on newsfeeds. Musk's maverick chatbot Grok repeated a conspiracy theory that "white genocide" was taking place in South Africa when asked about topics as unrelated as baseball and scaffolding. The posts were quickly deleted but Grok has gone on to praise Hitler and push far-right ideologies based on false claims.

"It's a horrible, horrible waste," said Wilson, the director of campaign group Oilfield Witness, pointing to Grok-generated images of Nazi Mickey Mouse as an example of what fossil gas was being burned to produce. "What useful purpose does this serve?"

Wilson is not alone in asking this question. Scientists are watching the AI boom with unease as it pollutes the natural world with carbon and the digital world with dangers ranging from dodgy health myths to deepfake pornography. Some experts fear datacentres may derail the shift to a clean economy, adding an unnecessary hurdle to the task of keeping the planet from heating 1.5C. Others argue that the energy costs pale in comparison not just to polluting industries, but also to the technology's power to reshape society.