Eric Schmidt: Build more AI DCs, climate goals not in reach

Google's former chief Eric Schmidt thinks we shouldn't let AI's ballooning power consumption worry us, because putting AI to work on climate change issues will be our best shot at solving them.

Schmidt was speaking at a recent AI summit in Washington DC, and his comments echo those of Microsoft founder Bill Gates who expressed very similar sentiments at an event in London earlier this year.

What is it about AI that makes billionaire businessmen believe that pursuing its development trumps all efforts to control climate change, we wonder?

According to reports, the former Google CEO said that any moves to curtail the expanding amounts of energy consumed in developing and training ever more advanced AI models are futile, and should be simply abandoned in favor of a no-holds-barred approach to investment in the technology.

"All of that will be swamped by the enormous needs of this new technology," he said, adding that "we may make mistakes with respect to how it's used, but I can assure you that we're not going to get there through conservation."

Schmidt further stated that he believes that "we're not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we're not organized to do it," and that he would rather bet on AI solving the problems than constraining the development of the tech and still having the problems anyway.

This rather optimistic view of the Earth-saving potential of AI can perhaps be explained by the fact that Schmidt has his own investments in the technology. According to Business Insider, he is the founder of White Stork, a defense company that develops AI-powered drones.

However, a recent report from investment outfit Goldman Sachs estimated that despite approximately $1 trillion of capital expenditure commitments by businesses to develop and deploy AI, there has been little to show for it so far.

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And another recent prediction from analyst firm Gartner indicated that at least 30 percent of GenAI projects are set to be abandoned after proof of concept by the end of 2025.

Despite this, investors continue to throw cash at the infrastructure which AI needs. Just last month, financial services biz Morgan Stanley estimated that the datacenter industry is set to emit 2.5 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide between now and the end of the decade, three times more than if generative AI had not been developed.

Another recent report from IDC indicated that demand for AI workloads will lead to a significant increase in datacenter capacity, energy consumption, and carbon emissions – a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.5 percent through 2027, causing energy consumption to grow by 44.7 percent over the same period.

Yet Schmidt seems to believe this is either nothing to worry about, or that climate change is going to happen anyway so we might as well reap the benefits of AI. Well, those with the money to invest will, anyway.

He is not alone, as the example of Bill Gates shows. Speaking at an event in London hosted by his Breakthrough Energy venture fund in June, the billionaire said the growing power demands of AI were nothing to worry about, as AI would enable everyone to use less energy by making technology and electricity grids more efficient.

This touching faith in the power of AI to solve all our problems might have something to do with predictions such as those from McKinsey earlier this year that estimated gen AI could add anything between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion to the global economy annually. And who wants to put the brakes on when there is money to be made like that? Certainly not Gates or Schmidt. ®