Geoffrey Hinton, computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the existential threat of AI along with his part of shaping the world of AI.
Companies are buying credits — called unbundled renewable energy certificates — that can make it seem that power consumed from a coal plant came from a solar farm instead. Amazon, Microsoft and Meta rely on millions of unbundled RECs each year to claim emission reductions when making voluntary disclosures to CDP, a nonprofit that runs a global environmental reporting system.
Not all tech companies have gobbled up unbundled RECs to obscure the rising emissions that have resulted from the hotly-contested AI race. Alphabet Inc.’s Google phased out its use of unbundled RECs several years ago after acknowledging that it doesn’t amount to real emissions reductions. “Studies have raised legitimate questions about whether displace fossil-powered generation,” said Michael Terrell, senior director of energy and climate at Google.
“If consumers do not understand what the climate impact of AI is, because tech companies do not transparently report on it, then there’s no incentive for consumers to change their behavior and change to a different AI model,” said Mooldijk. One way to do this is to sign a contract for clean power directly with the supplier through a power-purchase agreement, where a tech company is signing a long-term contract and thus taking on some of the risk for a period of 10 or 15 years. That, in turn, makes it easier for the developer to acquire the financing to build the solar or wind farm.
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