Google says that it will not "build custom AI/ML algorithms to facilitate upstream extraction in the oil and gas industry," the company announced on Tuesday. This represents a small but significant win for climate activists. Google's comment coincided with the release of a new Greenpeace report highlighting the role of the three leading cloud-computing services--Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure--in helping companies find and extract oil and gas. Greenpeace notes that extracting known fossil fuel reserves would already be sufficient to push the world over 2 degrees of warming. Uncovering additional reserves will ultimately lead to even more warming.

While many news stories focus on the pitfalls of technology, Wired did something a little different and put together a cover story of 25 people and groups who the magazine says are "racing to save us." From climate change to the growing power of big tech behemoths, the world is facing any number of challenges, in some cases existential ones. The innovations that facilitate our lives are frequently double edged swords. The power plants that quench our thirst for electricity are spewing planet warming emissions into the atmosphere. The facial recognition algorithms that can help organize smartphone photo collections also have inherent biases against women and minorities.