The Download: AI emissions and Google’s big week

AI’s emissions are about to skyrocket even further

It’s no secret that the current AI boom is using up immense amounts of energy. Now we have a better idea of how much. 

A new paper, from a team at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examined 78% of all data centers in the country in the US. These facilities—essentially buildings filled to the brim with rows of servers—are where AI models get trained, and they also get “pinged” every time we send a request through models like ChatGPT. They require huge amounts of energy both to power the servers and to keep them cool. 

Since 2018, carbon emissions from data centers in the US have tripled. It’s difficult to put a number on how much AI in particular is responsible for this surge. But AI’s share is certainly growing rapidly as nearly every segment of the economy attempts to adopt the technology.

Read the full story.

Google’s big week was a flex for the power of big tech

Google has been speeding toward the holiday by shipping or announcing a flurry of products and updates. The combination of stuff here is pretty monumental, not just for a single company, but I think because it speaks to the power of the technology industry—even if it does trigger a personal desire that we could do more to harness that power and put it to more noble uses. Read more here.

This story originally appeared in The Debrief with Mat Honan, our weekly take on what’s really going on behind the biggest tech headlines. The story is subscriber-only so nab a subscription too, if you haven’t already! Or you can sign up to the newsletter for free to get the next edition in your inbox on Friday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1  Mysterious drones have been spotted along the US east coast

People are getting a bit freaked out, to say the least. (BBC)

• Although sometimes they’re just small planes, authorities say. (Wired)
• Trump says they should be shot down. (Politico)

2 TikTok could be gone from app stores by January 19

Last week, a US appeals court upheld a law forcing Bytedance to divest. (Reuters)

• The rationale behind the ban could open the door to other regulations that suppress speech. (Atlantic)
• Influencers are putting together their post-TikTok plans. (Business Insider)
• The long-shot plan to save TikTok. (Verge)
• The depressing truth about the coming ban. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Authorities in Serbia are using phone-cracking tools to install spyware

Activists and journalists found their phone had been tampered with after a run-in with police. (404 Media)

4 Cellphone videos are fueling violence inside US schools

Students are using phones to arrange, provoke and capture brawls in the corridors. (NYT)

5 AI search startup Perplexity says it will generate $10.5 million a month next year
It’s in talks to raise money at a $9 billion valuation. (The Information)

• AI search could break the web. (MIT Technology Review)

6 How Musk’s partnership with Trump could influence science

Even if he can’t cut as much as he’d like, he still stands to make big changes. (Nature)

• Is “deleting” the IRS his worst idea yet? (Washington Post)
• The top cybersecurity agency is bracing for Trump. (Wired)
• Trump’s win is a huge loss for the climate. (MIT Technology Review)

7 AI firms will scour the globe looking for cheap energy

Low-cost power is an absolute priority. (Wired)

• It’s an insatiably hungry industry. (Bloomberg)

8 Anthropic’s Claude is winning the chatbot battle for tech insiders

It’s not as big as ChatGPT, but it’s got a special something that people like. (NYT)

• A new Character.ai chatbot for teens will no longer talk romance. (Verge)
• How to trust what a chatbot says. (MIT Technology Review)

9 The reaction to the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder could prompt a reckoning

Healthcare’s algorithmic decision-making turns us into numbers on a spreadsheets. (Vanity Fair)

• Luigi Mangione has to mean something. (Atlantic)

10 How China’s satellite megaprojects are challenging Starlink

Between them, Qianfan, Guo Wang and Honghu-3 could have as many satellites. (CNBC)

Quote of the day

“We’ve achieved peak data and there’ll be no more.”

OpenAI’s cofounder and former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, tells the NeurIPS conference that the way AI models will be trained will have to change.

The big story

How to stop a state from sinking

In a 10-month span between 2020 and 2021, southwest Louisiana saw five climate-related disasters, including two destructive hurricanes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, more storms are coming, and many areas are not prepared.

But some government officials and state engineers are hoping there is an alternative: elevation. The $6.8 billion Southwest Coastal Louisiana Project is betting that raising residences by a few feet, coupled with extensive work to restore coastal boundary lands, will keep Louisianans in their communities.

Ultimately, it’s something of a last-ditch effort to preserve this slice of coastline, even as some locals pick up and move inland and as formal plans for managed retreat become more popular in climate-­vulnerable areas across the country and the rest of the world. Read the full story.

—Xander Peters

We can still have nice things