A few years ago, Ketan Joshi read a statistic about artificial intelligence and climate change that caught his eye. In late 2023, Google began claiming that AI could help cut global greenhouse gas emissions by between 5 and 10 percent by 2030. Joshi, an energy researcher, was shocked by the massive numbers Google was touting—especially AI’s purported ability to effectively cut the equivalent of what the European Union emits each year. “I found [the emissions claim] really compelling because there's very few things that can do that,” he says. Tech companies are locked in a battle to develop AI as fast as possible—one with potentially massive implications for climate change.