Sorry, AI won't "fix" climate change

More maddening, the argument suggests that the technology's massive consumption of electricity today doesn't much matter, since it will allow us to generate abundant clean power in the future. By all accounts, AI's energy demands will only continue to increase, even as the world scrambles to build larger, cleaner power systems to meet the increasing needs of EV charging, green hydrogen production, heat pumps, and other low-carbon technologies. Altman himself reportedly just met with White House officials to make the case for building absolutely massive AI data centers, which could require the equivalent of five dedicated nuclear reactors to run. It's a bedrock perspective of MIT Technology Review that technological advances can deliver real benefits and accelerate societal progress in meaningful ways. But for decades researchers and companies have oversold the potential of AI to deliver blockbuster medicines, achieve super intelligence, and free humanity from the need to work. To be fair, there have been significant advances, but nothing on the order of what's been hyped.