The SEC Newgate AI Weekly

England are through to the final of the Euros thanks to Ollie Watkins’ right foot, questions around Joe Biden’s leadership continue, and the sun comes down on Andy Murray’s tennis career. It’s been another big week across current affairs and sport, but it’s been equally busy in the world of AI.

Alarm builds over environmental costs and energy burden of AI

It’s becoming ever clearer that the energy demand and carbon emissions of widespread adoption of AI will become an issue in years to come. In its annual report, Google has said that its own greenhouse gas emissions jumped nearly 50% in five years, as a result of its AI data centre buildout. It also said that its water usage had increased by 17%, as a result of the ‘water footprint required to cool’ AI products and services. Given Google has committed to achieving net zero by 2030, its ESG ambitions are being tested by its ambitions to gain the upper hand in the AI race.

This week Microsoft signed a carbon credit deal with Occidental Petroleum worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The deal has been struck as the company aims to keep its climate promises amid the surge in power driven by AI. This will allow Microsoft to offset its emissions by paying Occidental to have the carbon removed from the atmosphere and stored underground. With Microsoft’s pledge to be “carbon negative” by 2030, it’s clear that the tech juggernauts will continue to look for solutions.

These two examples point to a wider trend – AI is both power hungry and carbon intensive, with demand growing. As reported, a generative AI system may use 33 times more energy to complete a task than it would take with traditional software.

Microsoft and Apple drop OpenAI seats in the face of antitrust scrutiny

In a move that anticipates greater antitrust scrutiny from the EU and the USA on Big Tech’s investments in AI, Microsoft has let go of its seat as an observer on the board of OpenAI with immediate effect. Meanwhile, Apple will also not pick up a similar position.

Microsoft’s involvement with OpenAI has been a crucial part of the company’s growth, given the $13bn it has received, and computing power and cloud storage that it has offered.

The EU Commission has already expressed worry about how Big Tech firms could use their power to build AI tools and then roll them out across their ecosystems. With concern over market concentration and anti-competitive behaviour, regulators in the EU and USA are already circling to understand whether it currently practices break their antitrust rules.

Reform UK AI candidate conspiracy theories quashed

In one of the most surprising angles from the general election campaign, commentators speculated that a Reform UK general election candidate wasn’t real at all, was a so-called ‘ghost candidate’ and was generated by AI. Matt Matlock, candidate for Clapham and Brixton Hill, has since come forward to confirm that he does indeed exist, and the BBC have found no evidence that any of Reform’s candidates were fake.