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Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI
Can artificial intelligence really enrich fossil-fuel companies and fight climate change at the same time? The tech giant says yes.
In a white paper published late last year, Brad Smith, the company’s vice chair and president, and Melanie Nakagawa, its chief sustainability officer, described a “planetary crisis” that AI could help solve. (Many of the documents I viewed have been submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a whistleblower complaint alleging that the company has omitted from public disclosures “the serious climate and environmental harms caused by the technology it provides to the fossil fuel industry,” arguing that the information is of material and financial importance to investors. One slide deck from January 2022 that I obtained presented an analysis of how Microsoft’s tools could allow ExxonMobil to increase its annual revenue by $1.4 billion—$600 million of which would come from maximizing so-called sustainable production, or oil drilled using less energy.
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