I agree. This is good reporting. We need to keep up the hammering any way we can. Little chips can turn into cracks if we keep hitting the same places over and over again.
This also exposes how money is the god they all pray to and money is all that matters. I guess they figure, screw the next generations. take all of the money they can get now and not worry about the future beyond their own life spans.
Keep chipping away young lady and us oldsters will keep supporting your work as best as we can.
Eye opening piece, as usual. I'm late to the game, no doubt, but thank you for introducing me to Enabled Emissions Campaign. It is heartening to learn there are professionals with a thorough understanding of AI, both its pros and cons, who are committed to the ethical implementation of this technology.
Great reporting as always. The hypocrisy needs to be made clear.
Also, I’ve been appreciating the opinions of Hamilton Nolan of late and can’t help but notice the cross pollination of your most recent work. You should check it out. I’m going to say the same over there.
There’s a symbiotic relationship between the oil industry and AI that it’s pretty important to call out. It’s not just that AI (presumably) can help the oil industry drill for more oil but also that for oil companies gas powered AI data centers help them sell more gas and tell the story of how gas is supposedly indispensable for powering new technologies (in reality there’s a several years backlog for gas turbines so a gas powered data center will not ready any faster than a wind and solar powered data center anyways). You’ve even seen AI executives parrot oil and gas talking points when defending the energy footprint of their data centers and take money from gulf petrostates, which seems to give the game away.
I guess the bigger story is that there just isn’t that much demand for AI, so it was easy for the oil companies to become the biggest buyers of AI services. Even if AI can make a difference for certain renewables projects, there’s simply an abundance of good renewables projects and grid upgrades to get started on that the AI-supported projects can wait (and obviously with oil it’s the opposite as the easy oil has already been extracted and burned).
It’s also worth pointing out that oil industry publications (like KPMG’s Drilled magazine) write about how the oil industry is losing “talent” to tech. Paying top dollar for the latest tech gadgets may be a way for oil companies to compete for workers, regardless if it makes any difference at all.
Fantastic reporting, please keep up this line of questioning. I have been wondering about the connections between big tech and big oil and gas. AI is being shoved down our throats as essential to our future, while the AI billionaires profit from MAGA authoritarianism, which is killing all climate policies that would save us. I feel like the focus on AI is giving cover to big fossil fuel companies, but I know they're still doing evil in the background. I wonder if most, if not all, AI companies are profiting from and collaborating with evil fossil fuel CEOs.
It's come a long way. The two main desktop environments, KDE and GNOME, to me they seem close to Windows or Mac. Better than Windows 11, IMO, which seems to have fallen to what Cory Doctorow calls enshittification.
But if you run into trouble you may have a local Linux group doing "Installfests" where you can get help. Also check out the End of 10 campaign, though for that the U.S. isn't doing as well as Europe. Still, you may find an event near you.
On that note, while it's not the scale of what Emily is writing about here, maybe, I've heard estimates that MS's choice to not support older computers in Windows 11 may obsolete hundreds of millions of computers this fall, with the emissions and ewaste impact that implies.
Thank you for shedding lots of light on how the money is flowing from big oil to big tech. There seems to be some small vindication in Microsoft's inability to engage in any public debate or comment about their embarrassing hypocrisy.
Unfortunately it seems unlikely that the motivation to improve oil E&P will continue while a large portion of the population is unconvinced that we are gambling descendants' future well-being.
Add Microsoft to the legions of Climate Change Cheerleaders found in the Republican Party and Trump Administration. Their goal is clearly to promote climate change and should be given full credit: they are using every tool, every policy and every market to stimulate climate change: the science is there to prove it!
As a fellow former Microsoft (and Akamai) employee, these are some questions I’ve had on my mind after my times there…
What happens when innovation outpaces intention?
How do we hold systems, and ourselves, accountable when the tech we build outgrows the guardrails we imagined?
I’ve seen firsthand how teams driven by impact can slowly morph into engines of scale, efficiency, and power, with little room left for dissent, nuance, or human pause. And yet, I still believe in the power of tech for good...when it’s built with humility, curiosity, and courage.
Grateful for this kind of deep reporting that refuses to look away. The more we center these stories, the more we can shape a future that’s not just faster, but fairer.
Whether they are used to pick bombing targets in Gaza, or figure out where to drill for oil, these are general-purpose computing tools deployed to these tasks.
Microsoft being the number 1 cloud provider for a military contractor is not, in my mind, any more morally fraught than Scott being the number 1 paper provider or Black & Decker being the number 1 drill bit provider.
If you want to argue that everyone should disengage from business with oil and military support, fair enough I guess. But I don’t see the climate angle in calling out Microsoft for supplying compute resources to an oil company.
This is a fantastic piece of reporting and writing
Dang thank you Bill!!
I agree. This is good reporting. We need to keep up the hammering any way we can. Little chips can turn into cracks if we keep hitting the same places over and over again.
This also exposes how money is the god they all pray to and money is all that matters. I guess they figure, screw the next generations. take all of the money they can get now and not worry about the future beyond their own life spans.
Keep chipping away young lady and us oldsters will keep supporting your work as best as we can.
Eye opening piece, as usual. I'm late to the game, no doubt, but thank you for introducing me to Enabled Emissions Campaign. It is heartening to learn there are professionals with a thorough understanding of AI, both its pros and cons, who are committed to the ethical implementation of this technology.
Great reporting as always. The hypocrisy needs to be made clear.
Also, I’ve been appreciating the opinions of Hamilton Nolan of late and can’t help but notice the cross pollination of your most recent work. You should check it out. I’m going to say the same over there.
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/when-do-you-need-to-quit-your-job?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
There’s a symbiotic relationship between the oil industry and AI that it’s pretty important to call out. It’s not just that AI (presumably) can help the oil industry drill for more oil but also that for oil companies gas powered AI data centers help them sell more gas and tell the story of how gas is supposedly indispensable for powering new technologies (in reality there’s a several years backlog for gas turbines so a gas powered data center will not ready any faster than a wind and solar powered data center anyways). You’ve even seen AI executives parrot oil and gas talking points when defending the energy footprint of their data centers and take money from gulf petrostates, which seems to give the game away.
I guess the bigger story is that there just isn’t that much demand for AI, so it was easy for the oil companies to become the biggest buyers of AI services. Even if AI can make a difference for certain renewables projects, there’s simply an abundance of good renewables projects and grid upgrades to get started on that the AI-supported projects can wait (and obviously with oil it’s the opposite as the easy oil has already been extracted and burned).
It’s also worth pointing out that oil industry publications (like KPMG’s Drilled magazine) write about how the oil industry is losing “talent” to tech. Paying top dollar for the latest tech gadgets may be a way for oil companies to compete for workers, regardless if it makes any difference at all.
Fantastic reporting, please keep up this line of questioning. I have been wondering about the connections between big tech and big oil and gas. AI is being shoved down our throats as essential to our future, while the AI billionaires profit from MAGA authoritarianism, which is killing all climate policies that would save us. I feel like the focus on AI is giving cover to big fossil fuel companies, but I know they're still doing evil in the background. I wonder if most, if not all, AI companies are profiting from and collaborating with evil fossil fuel CEOs.
Give a productivity boost to Big Oil? The trickle-down metaphor is even more apt here...and yet equally invalid.
Also, I want to thank Will and Holly for their courage and integrity.
Thank you for this great piece Emily. The planet thanks you too.
Ugg. It’s so much worse than we thought. Thanks for shining a light on this important issue.
boycott time. Long ago I replaced MS Office with LibreOffice. Now, maybe it's time to see if Linux is learnable.
It's come a long way. The two main desktop environments, KDE and GNOME, to me they seem close to Windows or Mac. Better than Windows 11, IMO, which seems to have fallen to what Cory Doctorow calls enshittification.
But if you run into trouble you may have a local Linux group doing "Installfests" where you can get help. Also check out the End of 10 campaign, though for that the U.S. isn't doing as well as Europe. Still, you may find an event near you.
On that note, while it's not the scale of what Emily is writing about here, maybe, I've heard estimates that MS's choice to not support older computers in Windows 11 may obsolete hundreds of millions of computers this fall, with the emissions and ewaste impact that implies.
Thank you for shedding lots of light on how the money is flowing from big oil to big tech. There seems to be some small vindication in Microsoft's inability to engage in any public debate or comment about their embarrassing hypocrisy.
Unfortunately it seems unlikely that the motivation to improve oil E&P will continue while a large portion of the population is unconvinced that we are gambling descendants' future well-being.
Add Microsoft to the legions of Climate Change Cheerleaders found in the Republican Party and Trump Administration. Their goal is clearly to promote climate change and should be given full credit: they are using every tool, every policy and every market to stimulate climate change: the science is there to prove it!
I am stunned by the hypocrisy. Good digging and brave reporting.
As a fellow former Microsoft (and Akamai) employee, these are some questions I’ve had on my mind after my times there…
What happens when innovation outpaces intention?
How do we hold systems, and ourselves, accountable when the tech we build outgrows the guardrails we imagined?
I’ve seen firsthand how teams driven by impact can slowly morph into engines of scale, efficiency, and power, with little room left for dissent, nuance, or human pause. And yet, I still believe in the power of tech for good...when it’s built with humility, curiosity, and courage.
Grateful for this kind of deep reporting that refuses to look away. The more we center these stories, the more we can shape a future that’s not just faster, but fairer.
I struggle with conclusions such as these.
Whether they are used to pick bombing targets in Gaza, or figure out where to drill for oil, these are general-purpose computing tools deployed to these tasks.
Microsoft being the number 1 cloud provider for a military contractor is not, in my mind, any more morally fraught than Scott being the number 1 paper provider or Black & Decker being the number 1 drill bit provider.
If you want to argue that everyone should disengage from business with oil and military support, fair enough I guess. But I don’t see the climate angle in calling out Microsoft for supplying compute resources to an oil company.