Essay by Eric Worrall
Greens have noticed AI is incompatible with their beloved renewable transition. And they don’t like it one bit.
Inside Meta’s fight to change climate reality… all so it can frantically expand a risky AI program
Everyone is ignoring the science on what Meta’s generative AI investment really costs, even though there’s no evidence of a single, significant societal benefit.
KETAN JOSHI
OCT 3, 2025…
Big tech is being pulled in a few directions at once. In the US, where most tech companies are headquartered, cosying up to a fascist, climate-denying government means making hollow, technosolutionist noises about carbon capture and nuclear fusion. But for the rest of the world, and particularly in Europe, climate change still exists. Now that these companies have become existentially dependent on data centre expansionism, required to power generative systems that require far more power to deliver worse results, they have to refresh their greenwashing techniques, and that means eroding measured reality from the ground up.
It is not clear what any of this is meant to actually be for. It was recently revealed that Meta explicitly allows its chatbots to develop “sensual” relationships with children, and offer fabricated medical misinformation. Meta illegally downloaded a torrent of millions of books (including mine), to help train its models. Private chats with chatbots were inadvertently made public, revealing sensitive information. Meta’s chatbots are designed to present as real humans, resulting in the rapid spread of mental health crises and even some tragic deaths.
I am trying to think of a single, substantiated and significant societal benefit of Meta’s generative AI investment, and I am pretty confident that it simply does not exist.
…
If there is a neat through-line in the history of climate activism, it is the ongoing fight to connect human society to physical reality. First, the messy struggle to nurture the acceptance of the basic science of the problem, and more recently, the struggle to get everyone who says they accept the science to at least fucking act like it. With big tech, that struggle continues in the new arena of how we measure and report on who’s committing the worst climate sins.
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Read more: https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/10/03/meta-climate-change-reality-artificial-intelligence/
You know when greens trotsky out phrases like “cosying up to a fascist, climate-denying government“, I don’t get the sense they feel like winners.
Declaring AI has no societal benefit because of tragic stories of kids mistaking their chatbot for their friend is like declaring automobiles have no societal benefit because sometimes there are automobile accidents which involve children.
I absolutely agree children need to be protected – but you don’t ban automobiles because a handful of children get hurt, you make automobiles safer, to reduce the risk of accidents. Which is what needs to happen to AI chatbots.
Because AI is most definitely worth keeping, despite the harm it sometimes causes. In my own field of software development, AI has created a substantial boost in productivity. Not by replacing programmers, but by providing souped up assistant tools which are actually starting to be useful.
In mathematics and research, AI is contributing significant breakthroughs, like a recent breakthrough in fluid dynamics, which could lead to advances ranging from better aircraft, cheaper sea freight, more efficient oil and gas pipelines, better drug delivery syringes and, yes, improved control of nuclear fusion plasmas.
In biology and genetics, the ability of AI to analyse enormous quantities of raw data is leading to more rapid mapping of how DNA and genetics works, better understanding of cancer and other diseases, new cures for previously intractable medical problems, and in the tantalisingly near future, treatments which could slow ageing and improve quality of life for older people.
Where does META fit into all this? I’m no fan of Zuckerberg, on a number of occasions I think Zuckerberg’s behaviour has been abominable, but META does have a legitimate place in the business ecosystem. A lot of people use META to win business, including a friend whose growing Canadian adventure business uses advanced META features to promote her business. META’s AI investment appears to focus on how users and businesses interact with META – better analysis of marketing and campaign effectiveness, better communication with customers and potential customers, and improved workflows.
Why is author Ketan Joshi so hostile towards Meta AI, and AI in general? Only Ketan knows what is happening in Ketan’s head. But the rant I quoted appears to follow an increasingly familiar playbook of greens who refuse to admit their renewable transition is dead, but who in their hearts know their cause has failed.
Energy guzzling AI is shaping up to be a prime target of green bitterness.
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