For much of last year, US Marines conducting training exercises in the waters off South Korea, the Philippines, India, and Indonesia were also running an experiment. The service members in the unit responsible for sorting through foreign intelligence and making their superiors aware of possible local threats were for the first time using generative AI to do it, testing a leading AI tool the Pentagon has been funding. Two officers tell us that they used the new system to help scour thousands of pieces of open-source intelligence--nonclassified articles, reports, images, videos--collected in the various countries where they operated, and that it did so far faster than was possible with the old method of analyzing them manually. Though the US military has been developing computer vision models and similar AI tools since 2017, the use of generative AI--tools that can engage in human-like conversation--represent a newer frontier. The International Energy Agency states in a new report that AI could eventually reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, possibly by much more than the boom in energy-guzzling data center development pushes them up.

There are reasonable arguments to suggest that AI tools may eventually help reduce emissions, as the IEA report underscores. But what we know for sure is that they're driving up energy demand and emissions today--especially in the regional pockets where data centers are clustering. So far, these facilities, which generally run around the clock, are substantially powered through natural-gas turbines, which produce significant levels of planet-warming emissions. Electricity demands are rising so fast that developers are proposing to build new gas plants and convert retired coal plants to supply the buzzy industry. The other thing we know is that there are better, cleaner ways of powering these facilities already, including geothermal plants, nuclear reactors, hydroelectric power, and wind or solar projects coupled with significant amounts of battery storage. The trade-off is that these facilities may cost more to build or operate, or take longer to get up and running.