Microsoft executives have been pondering these days concerning the finish of the world. In a white paper printed late final yr, Brad Smith, the corporate’s vice chair and president, and Melanie Nakagawa, its chief sustainability officer, described a “planetary disaster” that AI might assist remedy. Think about an AI-assisted instrument that helps scale back meals waste, to call one instance from the doc, or some future know-how that would “expedite decarbonization” by utilizing AI to invent new designs for inexperienced tech.
However as Microsoft makes an attempt to buoy its repute as an AI chief in local weather innovation, the corporate can also be promoting its AI to fossil-fuel corporations. A whole lot of pages of inside paperwork I’ve obtained, plus interviews I’ve carried out over the previous yr with 15 present and former staff and executives, present that the tech large has sought to market the know-how to corporations resembling ExxonMobil and Chevron as a strong instrument for locating and creating new oil and gasoline reserves and maximizing their manufacturing—all whereas publicly committing to dramatically scale back emissions.
Though tech corporations have lengthy accomplished enterprise with the fossil-fuel {industry}, Microsoft’s case is notable. It demonstrates how the AI growth contributes to probably the most urgent points dealing with our planet at the moment—even if the know-how is usually lauded for its supposed potential to enhance our world, as when Sam Altman testified to Congress that it might handle points resembling “local weather change and curing most cancers.” These offers additionally present how Microsoft can use the vagaries of AI to speak out of each side of its mouth, courting the fossil-fuel {industry} whereas asserting its environmental bona fides. (Most of the paperwork I seen have been submitted to the Securities and Trade Fee as a part of a whistleblower grievance alleging that the corporate has omitted from public disclosures “the intense local weather and environmental harms attributable to the know-how it supplies to the fossil gasoline {industry},” arguing that the data is of fabric and monetary significance to buyers. A Microsoft spokesperson stated the corporate was unaware of the submitting and had not been contacted by the SEC.)
For years, Microsoft routinely promoted its work with corporations resembling Schlumberger, Chevron, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Baker Hughes, and Shell. Round 2020, the identical yr Microsoft made bold local weather commitments that included a aim to succeed in carbon negativity by 2030, the tech agency grew quieter about such partnerships and centered on messaging concerning the transition to internet zero. Behind the scenes, Microsoft has continued to hunt enterprise from the fossil-fuel {industry}; paperwork associated to its general pitch technique present that it has sought energy-industry enterprise partly by advertising and marketing the skills to optimize and automate drilling and to maximise oil and gasoline manufacturing. Over the previous yr, it has leaned into the generative-AI rush in an effort to clinch extra offers—every of which may be value greater than lots of of tens of millions of {dollars}. Microsoft staff have famous that the oil and gasoline industries might signify a market alternative of $35 billion to $75 billion yearly, in response to paperwork I seen.
Based mostly on the paperwork, executives see these generative-AI instruments—the buzziest new know-how for the reason that iPhone, and one which Microsoft has invested billions of {dollars} in—as a form of secret weapon for consumer outreach. Throughout an inside convention name with greater than 200 staff final September, a Microsoft vitality exec named Bilal Khursheed famous that, for the reason that firm’s generative-AI investments, the vitality {industry} was turning to Microsoft for steerage on AI in a means that had maybe “by no means occurred earlier than.” “We have to maximize this chance. We have to lay out the pathway to adopting generative AI,” he stated, in response to a transcript of the assembly I seen. One such pathway? Utilizing generative algorithms to mannequin oil and gasoline reservoirs and maximize their extraction, Hema Prapoo, Microsoft’s world lead of oil and gasoline enterprise, stated later within the assembly. A number of paperwork additionally emphasize Microsoft’s distinctive relationship with OpenAI as a further promoting level for vitality purchasers, suggesting that GPT might drive productiveness separate from fossil-fuel extraction. (OpenAI didn’t reply to a request for remark.)
From a enterprise perspective, after all, Microsoft’s pursuit of huge offers with fossil-fuel corporations is smart. And such partnerships don’t essentially imply that the corporate is contradicting its local weather commitments. Microsoft executives have made the case that AI can even assist fossil-fuel corporations enhance their environmental footprint. Certainly, each Microsoft and its vitality clients defend their partnerships by arguing that their objectives work in concord, not contradiction. They advised me that AI providers could make oil and gasoline manufacturing extra environment friendly, rising manufacturing whereas lowering emissions—a chorus I noticed repeated in paperwork as a part of Microsoft’s gross sales pitches. As well as, a few of these corporations run wind farms and photo voltaic parks, which additional profit from Microsoft’s cloud applied sciences. Microsoft has additionally touted exploratory tutorial analysis into how AI could possibly be used to find new supplies for lowering CO2 within the ambiance.
The concept AI’s local weather advantages will outpace its environmental prices is basically speculative, nevertheless, particularly provided that generative-AI instruments are themselves tremendously resource-hungry. Inside the subsequent six years, the information facilities required to develop and run the sorts of next-generation AI fashions that Microsoft is investing in might use extra energy than all of India. They are going to be cooled by tens of millions upon tens of millions of gallons of water. All of the whereas, scientists agree, the world will get hotter, its local weather extra excessive.
Microsoft isn’t an organization that exists to battle local weather change, and it doesn’t must assume accountability for saving our planet. But the corporate is making an attempt to persuade the general public that by investing in a know-how that can also be getting used to complement fossil-fuel corporations, society can be higher outfitted to resolve the environmental disaster. A number of the firm’s personal staff described this concept to me as ridiculous. To those employees, Microsoft’s vitality contracts exhibit solely the unsavory actuality of how the corporate’s AI investments are literally used. Driving sustainability ahead? Possibly. Digging up fossil fuels? As Prapoo put it in that September convention name, it’s a “recreation changer.”
Before Holly Alpine left Microsoft earlier this yr—fed up, she stated, with the corporate’s continued assist of fossil-fuel extraction—she had spent almost a decade there working in roles centered on vitality and the atmosphere. Most lately, she headed a program inside Microsoft’s cloud operations and innovation division that invests in environmental sustainability tasks within the communities that host the corporate’s knowledge facilities. Alpine had additionally co-founded a sustainability curiosity group throughout the firm seven years in the past that hundreds of staff now belong to. (Like the opposite named sources on this story, she didn’t present any of the paperwork I reviewed.)
Members of this group initially involved themselves with modest company issues, resembling getting the corporate’s eating halls to chop down on single-use gadgets. However their ambitions grew, partly in response to Microsoft’s personal local weather commitments in 2020. These have been made throughout a second of heightened local weather activism; tens of millions world wide, together with tech employees, had simply rallied to protest the dearth of coordinated motion to chop again carbon emissions.
Microsoft has failed to scale back its annual emissions annually since then. Its newest environmental report, launched this Might, exhibits a 29 % improve in emissions since 2020—a change that has been pushed in no small half by current AI growth, as the corporate explains within the report. “All of Microsoft’s public statements and publications paint a good looking image of the makes use of of AI for sustainability,” Alpine advised me. “However this give attention to the positives is hiding the entire story, which is way darker.”
The foundation problem for Alpine and different advocates is Microsoft’s unflagging assist of fossil-fuel extraction. In March 2021, for instance, Microsoft expanded its partnership with Schlumberger, an oil-technology firm, to develop and launch an AI-enhanced service on Microsoft’s Azure platform. Azure supplies cloud computing to a wide range of organizations, however this product was tailored for the oil and gasoline industries, to help within the manufacturing of fossil fuels, amongst different makes use of. The hope, in response to two inside displays I seen, was that it will assist Microsoft seize enterprise from most of the main fossil-fuel suppliers. A spokesperson for Schlumberger declined to touch upon this deal.
Current AI advances have difficult the image, although they haven’t modified it. One slide deck from January 2022 that I obtained offered an evaluation of how Microsoft’s instruments might enable ExxonMobil to extend its annual income by $1.4 billion—$600 million of which might come from maximizing so-called sustainable manufacturing, or oil drilled utilizing much less vitality. (An ExxonMobil consultant declined to remark.) Different paperwork supplied particulars on a number of offers Chevron has signed with Microsoft to entry the tech large’s AI platform and different cloud providers. An government technique memo from June 2023 indicated that Microsoft hoped to pitch Chevron on adopting OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to “ship extra enterprise worth.” A Chevron spokesperson advised me that the corporate makes use of AI partly to “establish efficiencies in exploration and restoration and assist scale back our environmental footprint.” There’s the strain. On the one hand, AI could possibly assist scale back drilling’s toll on the atmosphere. Then again, it’s used for drilling.
How do these corporations weigh the environmental advantages of a extra environment friendly drilling operation in opposition to the environmental harms of with the ability to drill extra, quicker? A Shell spokesperson supplied a quantifiable instance of their pondering: Microsoft’s Azure AI platform allowed Shell to calculate the most effective settings for its gear, driving down carbon emissions at a number of of its natural-gas services. One facility noticed an estimated discount of 340,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per yr. This appears spectacular: Utilizing estimated emissions from the EPA, that is roughly the quantity of CO2 generated by 74,000 automobiles yearly. Relative to Shell’s complete emissions, nevertheless, it’s virtually insignificant. Based on the corporate’s personal reporting, Shell was liable for about 1.2 billion metric tons of emissions final yr.
Inside Microsoft, members of the sustainability group have repeatedly petitioned management to vary its stance on these contracts. Google, for instance, introduced in 2020 that it will not make customized AI instruments for fossil-fuel extraction—couldn’t Microsoft do the identical? “We’ve by no means advocated for slicing ties with the fossil-fuel {industry},” Alpine advised me. Microsoft might work with purchasers on their transition to scrub vitality, with out explicitly supporting extraction, Alpine reasoned.
To assist make her case, Alpine offered a memo to Smith in December 2021 that calculated the consequences of the corporate’s oil and gasoline offers. She pointed, for instance, to a single 2019 cope with ExxonMobil that would purportedly “increase manufacturing by as a lot as 50,000 oil-equivalent barrels a day by 2025,” in response to a Microsoft press launch. These further barrels would produce an estimated 6.4 million metric tons of emissions, drastically outweighing a carbon-removal pledge that Microsoft made in 2020, she wrote. (I verified her estimate with a number of unbiased carbon analysts. ExxonMobil declined to remark.)
Worker advocates requested firm management to amend its “Accountable AI” rules to handle the environmental penalties of the know-how. The group additionally really helpful additional restrictions on fossil-fuel-extraction tasks. Round this time, Microsoft as a substitute launched a brand new set of rules governing the corporate’s engagements with oil and gasoline clients. It was co-authored by Darryl Willis, the company vp of Microsoft’s vitality division (and a former BP government who served as BP’s de facto spokesperson in the course of the Deepwater Horizon disaster). Unsurprisingly, it didn’t undertake the entire group’s solutions.
What it did embrace was a stipulation that Microsoft will assist fossil-fuel extraction just for corporations which have “publicly dedicated to internet zero carbon targets.” This can be chilly consolation for some: A 2023 report from the Web Zero Tracker, a collaboration between nonprofits and the College of Oxford, discovered that such commitments from fossil-fuel corporations are “largely meaningless.” Most companies declare a net-zero goal that absolutely accounts just for their operational emissions, resembling whether or not their places of work, automotive fleets, or gear are powered with inexperienced vitality, whereas ignoring a lot of the emissions from the fossil fuels they produce.
When I talked with Willis about Microsoft’s vitality enterprise, he repeated again and again that “it’s difficult.” Willis defined that his staff is targeted on increasing vitality entry—“There are a billion folks on the planet who don’t have entry to vitality,” he stated—whereas additionally making an attempt to speed up the decarbonization of the world’s vitality. I requested him how Microsoft deliberate to realize the latter aim when it’s chasing contracts that assist corporations drill for fossil fuels. “Our plan, candidly said, is to verify we’re partnering with the correct organizations who’re leaning in and making an attempt to speed up and pull this [sustainability] journey ahead,” he stated. In different phrases, the corporate doesn’t see its method to promoting the know-how as incompatible with its sustainability objectives. “AI will remedy extra issues than it creates,” Willis advised me. “Loads of the dilemmas that we’re dealing with with vitality can be resolved due to the connection with generative AI.”
Hoping to know extra concerning the firm’s perspective, I additionally spoke with Alex Robart, a former Microsoft worker who left in 2022 and labored with Willis to jot down the vitality rules. He known as Microsoft’s method sensible. “Has Massive Vitality, incumbent vitality, in plenty of methods behaved fairly badly, significantly previously 25 to 40 years within the U.S. specifically, as regards to local weather? Yeah, completely,” he advised me. However he argued that fossil-fuel corporations must be a part of the transition to cleaner alternate options and can accomplish that provided that they’ve monetary incentives. “You want their steadiness sheets; you want their capital; you want their project-management experience. We’re speaking about constructing huge infrastructure, and constructing infrastructure is tough,” he stated. With out that, “it’s essentially not going to work.”
Within the meantime, Microsoft has “not dedicated to a timeline” for phasing out work that’s geared towards discovering and creating new fossil-fuel reserves, a spokesperson stated.
Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s first chief environmental officer, who left the corporate in 2022, fears that the world will be unable to reverse the present trajectory of AI growth even when the know-how is proven to have a net-negative affect on sustainability. Corporations are designing specialised chips and knowledge facilities only for superior generative-AI fashions. Microsoft is reportedly planning a $100 billion supercomputer to assist the following generations of OpenAI’s applied sciences; it might require as a lot vitality yearly as 4 million American properties. Abandoning all of this might be just like the U.S. outlawing automobiles after designing its whole freeway system round them.
Therein lies the crux of the issue: On this new generative-AI paradigm, uncertainty reigns over certainty, hypothesis dominates actuality, science defers to religion. The hype round generative AI is accelerating fossil-fuel extraction whereas the know-how consumes unprecedented quantities of vitality. As Joppa advised me: “This should be essentially the most cash we’ve ever spent within the least period of time on one thing we essentially don’t perceive.”