Where is the net benefit to society through all this, one asks? I'm not a luddite but news like this makes me feel ill. Turning the planet into one big AI data center just doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies.
Yes, an AI-assisted invention which paradoxically involves uprooting God only knows how many trees across 300 hectares (which by definition, means destroying entire ecosystems). Yes this AI will save us from ourselves.
Sort of. In many cases the solutions are cheaper and easier than the actions that cause climate change, but certain people oppose progress for political reasons -- and those political reasons are no deeper than "my opponents like it so I'm against it."
Moreover, its nature is societal, we don't need to wait for a technical one - if people were willing to adjust the way they live. I'm not sure we will be able to pull off the timing for an energy transition, depending on how far we overshoot. At a point not far past 1.5c, you enter hothouse earth and amplification.