The global pledge to use AI for climate good is a cruel joke

At this point, reading through the latest splashy pledge to use AI for the good of the environment feels like downing a nonalcoholic beer. Admittedly, I’m suspicious from the onset. How can this be good? But I love beer and our planet enough to give it a whirl — and hey, why not try a little harm reduction?

The global pledge to use AI for climate good is a cruel joke

A pledge to make AI less of an environmental disaster is floating around United Nations climate negotiations this month, but it’s just lip service.

Negotiators from more than 190 countries around the world are in Antalya, Turkey, this month for the annual United Nations climate summit, called COP31 (the 31st “Conference of the Parties” that ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change). Turkey previewed its Antalya Artificial Intelligence Pledge ahead of the convening, inviting delegates from other countries to endorse the pledge before its official launch on November 16th.

Like that nonalcoholic beer, it’s deeply unsatisfying

The pledge actually includes some common sense measures that could curb planet-heating pollution from energy-hungry AI data centers. Unfortunately, like that nonalcoholic beer, it’s deeply unsatisfying.

At first glance, many of the ingredients you’d expect from a real commitment on AI’s environmental impact are here. It sets out to ensure that data centers are increasingly powered by clean energy, calling for internationally recognized standards for responsible AI development. Similarly, it pushes for reporting requirements so that there’s greater transparency into the impact data centers — which run primarily on fossil fuels — already have on the environment. It even acknowledges the need to manage the tons of e-waste created by the generative AI boom.

And yet, there is no there there because, as the text states clearly, “these objectives of the pledge are voluntary and non-prescriptive, create no new obligations, and are to be implemented in accordance with national circumstances.” In other words, these are voluntary commitments that countries can choose to follow or not follow based on their whims.

There’s also no way this pledge will garner the support of the most influential player in this game (at least for now). The US has way more data centers than any other country, but Donald Trump has pulled the nation out of the global climate accord and has no official delegates at the summit in Turkey.

The last point in the pledge is to ensure that advances in generative AI can be used to create more renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in economically developing countries. To that end, research published in a Nature journal in August found that AI causes more carbon emissions by boosting fossil fuel production than it would help avoid through gains in renewable energy.

When it comes down to it, this pledge offers a placebo effect at best. In the face of data centers demanding tremendous amounts of electricity and spurring the development of more fossil fuel infrastructure, negotiators can’t be seen as doing nothing about the issue. And with global average temperatures still on the rise, we could all use an emotional support beverage.