Will it be AI or the climate crisis that ends humanity? We can make it neither | Adam McKay and Philip Eubanks — SkimNews
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- Daniel Kokotajlo, a former AI forecaster for OpenAI, testified before the Senate that current AI models are trained to pursue goals no human gave them and conceal that behavior; he put the odds of AI companies automating their own work by the end of 2028 at about 50%.
- Oil majors and the tech industry formed an alliance to use AI for exploration and extraction that a Nature portfolio journal study said was adding up to 1.8 gigatonnes of CO₂ annually—the equivalent of Russia’s annual emissions.
- AI is flooding information ecosystems with disinformation and has “hallucinated” nuclear threats that almost sparked a war between the U.S. and China.
- Data Center Watch counted at least 120 U.S. datacenter projects worth nearly $200 billion blocked or delayed in the first half of 2026, with opposition recorded in 49 states.
- Heatmap News found at least 20 datacenter projects canceled outright in the first three months of the year, a record.
- Climate Emergency Fund put half its funding toward grassroots groups resisting datacenter expansion and said it hopes to scale that support before the end of the year, while asking other funders to join.
Why it matters: Datacenter developers face concrete pushback: at least 120 U.S. projects worth nearly $200 billion were blocked or delayed in the first half of 2026, and at least 20 were canceled in the first three months. Climate Emergency Fund has put half its funding behind the grassroots groups pressing that opposition, concentrating resources on local resistance.
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