No Accountability What tech companies have claimed so far about the energy costs of building enormous AI models may have been incredibly misleading. Or, depending on your perspective, they lied to you. The Guardian reports that the actual emissions made by data centers owned by AI leaders including Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple, are about 662 percent higher than what they’ve officially reported. And this may just be the tip of the iceberg: the newspaper’s analysis was limited to emissions made between 2020 and 2022, a window that captures the cusp of the AI boom but not the staggering heights that it’s reached now. According to the analysis, Amazon was overall the largest emitter by far, but couldn’t be included in the above figure because data center-specific emissions weren’t available. Still, it’s just as guilty as all the rest for obfuscating its environmental impact. All five of the tech companies, The Guardian notes, have at various points claimed — laughably — to be carbon neutral. “It’s down to creative accounting,” a representative from the advocacy group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice told the newspaper. Parks and Recs When a tech company reports its emissions, what they’re showing you are “market-based” emissions, which are tamped down by purchasing energy certificates, or “Recs,” which they then factor into their calculations. These supposedly certify that a company is offsetting its dirty energy consumption with an equivalent amount of renewable energy. You’ll want to note that the renewable efforts don’t have to be undertaken by the…AI Datacenters More Than 600 Percent Worse for Environment Than Tech Companies Claimed