The author neglected to link to the actual report. Page 34 and 35. The Scope 2 stats the article cited don’t account for clean power generated.

Their link for the claim “Google cited AI as the cause” doesn’t mention power at all.

The link for the Microsoft numbers takes me to a report saying the 30% number is for Scope 3 emissions, which have nothing to do data center power usage.

there’s this type of reply guy on fedi lately who does the “well actually querying LLMs only happens in bursts and training is much more efficient than you’d think and nvidia says their gpus are energy-efficient” thing whenever the topic comes up

and meanwhile a bunch of major companies have violated their climate pledges and say it’s due to AI, they’re planning power plants specifically for data centers expanded for the push into AI, and large GPUs are notoriously the part of a computer that consumes the most power and emits a ton of heat (which notoriously has to be cooled in a way that wastes and pollutes a fuckton of clean water)

but the companies don’t publish smoking gun energy usage statistics on LLMs and generative AI specifically so who can say