Both Google and Amazon released their sustainability reports this week, and the numbers aren't pretty. Each company has pledged to zero-out its carbon emissions in the coming years, but AI has made those goals a lot harder to hit. Google's total carbon emissions are up 25% since last year, Amazon's are up 16%. A close reading of the reports suggests that both Amazon and Google will have to make some serious, and potentially costly, adjustments to their businesses if they're going to achieve their net-zero targets. Both Amazon and Google acknowledge their energy use has increased significantly in the last year as use of AI has risen. Both talk about carbon intensity ' essentially, how much pollution a company generates for every dollar of revenue it brings in ' a metric China has used over the last several years when negotiating climate treaties even as its emissions were skyrocketing. And both devote several pages touting how AI can benefit the environment, a case of 'protesting too...
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