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2020: Microsoft sets goal to be carbon negative by end of the decade.
2023: Microsoft’s emissions are 30% higher than in 2020.
Main cause? The relentless push to meet AI demand, which requires new data centers built out of carbon-intensive steel, cement, chips.
Corporations will go green on public pressure. 
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And just like crypto, it’s all for nothing.
Literally. I don’t really support ai or the optimism around it is very unwarranted even on here. I kinda wish it did gain sentience and try to fight back like in the movies, but it doesn’t even look it it can do that. Just a waste of resources all around.
the thing people call “AI” right now is not really AI. It cannot gain sentience no matter how much data you feed into it. Machine learning is a more appropriate term for it
The only reason people think the goal of “AI” research is to create sentient machines is because of science fiction movies.
that and marketing campaigns by companies like OpenAI trying to convince people that their product is more capable than it actually is
In Accelerando,
spoiler
Humanity is forced to the outer edges of the solar system because AI-powered corporations (called ‘the vile offspring’) hog all the sun’s energy to trade derivatives back and forth. Looks like we’ve figured out a shortcut.
Trusting corporations to not be evil is hilariously stupid.
Just fucking regulate them.
The regulator
Modern problems require modern solutions
How exactly were they planning on being “carbon negative” in the first place? Does that mean they were just gonna buy those carbon emission tax bond whatever the fuck they’re called, my brain isnt awake yet
They were going to shoot carbon into space with a railgun
Honestly that would be fuckin rad and I’d be 1000% on board
We will achieve this through a portfolio of negative emission technologies (NET) potentially including afforestation and reforestation, soil carbon sequestration, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCs), and direct air capture (DAC).
- afforestation and reforestation - growing trees where there weren’t trees before (afforestation).and regrowing trees (reforestation)
- soil carbon sequestration - changing farming methods to store carbon, theoretically over the long term (
) - bioenergy with carbon capture and storage - grow stuff, burn it and store the carbon
- direct air capture - extract and store carbon directly from the atmosphere using chemical or physical methods
Living on this planet and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible.
Things incompatible with capitalism:
Life
Sanity
Health
Democracy
The thing is, that the important part is not just reaching zero by 2030, it’s to minimize the carbon output along the way. For every ton emitted in addition to their plan in these past years, they should be undercutting their plan in the next years. Looking at the stats, that seems highly unlikely to happen, as they’d need to be carbon neutral for all of 2024 only to offset their failures in 2023. It’s so frustrating.
It doesn’t seem like they were doing anything about it before the big AI push anyway.
