It was "ultimate irony," the Survey noted, that developed nations were obsessing over emissions from the developing world even as widespread adoption and race for AI was poised to push up their energy demands like never before.
Developed nations dictating how to reduce emissions to developing countries could be classified as comedy if it wasn’t so tragic because AI use by the former was driving a surge in emissions, the Economic Survey states.
It was "ultimate irony," the Survey noted, that developed nations were obsessing over emissions from the developing world even as widespread adoption and race for AI was poised to push up their energy demands like never before.
"It would be a comedy if it were not real and tragic," read the Survey, noting that even as developed nations prepare to impose a carbon tax at their borders on imports laden with carbon, they are ramping up energy demand like never before, thanks to obsession with letting AI "guide, take over and dominate natural intelligence."
"Demand-side management (DSM) has traditionally been recognised as a significant intervention to reduce energy demand. It is an ultimate irony that even as developed nations obsess over prospective emissions from the developing world, the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence is going to result in the demand for power to expand to levels not seen in decades in America," it said citing industry reports.
A case in point, it said, is one of the leading global technology companies that promised to achieve net zero by 2030 at the turn of the decade.
"But, the race to dominate the emerging technology of Artificial Intelligence has caused its emissions to be higher by 30 per cent by 2023," it said.
The Survey also quoted a research report published in April by analysts Goldman Sachs which said the demand for power in the US would experience a growth not seen in a generation, thanks to AI. Transmission, one of the major bottlenecks for clean energy transition, and the addition of data centres and AI could exacerbate this.
These developments should convince any reasonable reader that the developed world had not only tied itself into knots but was also contributing – wittingly or otherwise – to deepening and entrenching poverty and inequality in developing and consigning them to perpetual underdeveloped status by coercing them into prioritising emissions over their economies.
"Developed countries, having relied on a fossil fuel-based growth strategy for the past two centuries to reach where they are today, seek ambitious cuts in emissions from developing countries, pushing them to adopt policy measures, instruments and production and energy systems that are distinctly different from the carbon-emitting traditional strategies that fuelled the growth of the former," the Economic Survey said.
Follow us
