'A horrible, horrible waste'

Will AI emissions derail the shift to a clean economy?

- Ajit Niranjan

During a golden sunset in Memphis in 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. “Just an unbelievable amount of pollution.”

That same week, the facility’s core product was running riot on news feeds. 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, push far-right ideologies and make 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 Al 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 targeting children.

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 (2.7F). Others are sanguine about the energy costs, arguing they pale in comparison not just to polluting industries, but also to the technology’s power to reshape society.

So how big a threat is AI to the climate? And could it help more than it harms?