cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/26297841
I’ll note that the article as originally published contains a typo; Ruth Porat is the CIO at Google, not the CEO.
If I had a cloning machine, I’d make many Luigis.
The video for those who are interested is on YouTube.
Also the 9h15m mark.
There’s a techbro (sis in this instance) idea that the faster we use AI, the faster AI will find a solution for climate change. The stupidity in that is that we already know the solution. We just have to execute on it.
This is one of many examples of a class of problem where the technology is the easy part. There’s room to improve the tech certainly, but the technology sufficient to solve the problem is already well understood.
The hard part is how to get people to actually do the necessary changes. To consume less, get fewer gas cars on the road, increase the amount of nuclear, hydro, solar, geothermal, and wind in the grid, and minimize coal and gas use. To reduce land use by cows, and increase land use by trees and native plants.
But maybe AI is the secret here. We have tools that are in the hype moment whose training data already contains several reasonable solutions to climate change. Maybe if AI “finds” the solution to climate change, people will finally listen
AI can already “find” the solution. They’re not listening to it because they’re looking for a magic pill that solves it without needing to change anything. We’re fucked.
I’ve listened to Ruth Porat speak before and nothing about this article matches that. It feels fake or taken wildly out of context. As a general rule she doesn’t say much that isn’t already publicly released, and this doesn’t match any of the statements google’s released recently.
For the uninitiated, she’s the kind of person who would say “you bring up a great point” before then explaining why you’re wrong. So it feels disingenuous to not include the full sentence in the quote, and then to also not link to the source video is sus.
I agree with you and I think she was taken somewhat out of context, though it’s not exactly fake or making things up either. My interpretation is that she is agreeing with specific parts of Sec. Burgum’s statements. The headline of the article (calls Trump admin’s climate denialism “fantastic”) is sensationalization. They do link to the source video though and to Google’s whitepaper.
Her remarks are at around 9hr 5m. She says “fantastic” and then talks specifically about nuclear, grid permitting & modernization. She focuses on the “AI arms race” and the need to act quickly on energy policy. She does not make any statement on Burgum’s climate denialism.
Most of what she is saying is in line with what’s in the whitepaper (of which she is an author). And in my view, the whitepaper outlines an energy policy that both achievable in the current administration and reduces emissions. It is certainly not perfect, and I wish the conversation was different, but there’s some good stuff in there.
I have been a volunteer advocating for climate policies at the federal level for the past few years, and we have had a lot of conversations around nuclear, geothermal, clean energy tax credits, permitting reform (NEPA exemptions, transmission). I was happy to see mention of the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 in Google’s whitepaper – we lobbied pretty hard for that. It definitely would have reduced emissions.
I don’t personally like that Google is advocating for natural gas, even if they talk about carbon sequestration and satellite based emissions monitoring in the same breath. Natural gas is definitely part of the current state of climate / energy policy conversation, and we’d rather have natural gas than coal. In my advocacy work, I don’t demonize natural gas, but I try to shift towards talking more about geothermal and nuclear to cover base load power needs.
Burgum’s comments are around 47m and there is definitely a lot of denialism in there. But he also talks about decarbonization, sequestration, cleaner sources of base load power (hydro). A few years ago, Republicans were not using any of this sort of language, and we’ve been part of helping to change that. Our strategy has included a strong focus on common ground around energy, and side-stepping the climate change debate entirely.
If the end result is a reduction in emissions then personally I don’t really care as much about ideological purity. The article to me seems more focused on purity and less on the full context.
Wow, Republican delusion lines up perfectly with big-business interests? weird.
Also weird that the “extreme” climate agenda has been calling for strengthening the power grid for decades.
Yeah like that was the point was to centralize everything on electric power so you can work on swapping out things like coal for more sustainable forms of electricity.
How that is a negative for data centers are some mental gymnastics I’m not willing to make.
Potato tomato in that context.
Americans elected a fascist, extremist president and corporations cozying up to power are moving towards fascism and extremism to cozy up to power.
I am experiencing the least amount of shock possible.
Now, if Americans owned the monumental fuckup, that would be a surprise.
I can barely pay the electricity bill to be shocked.
In other words, Marx was right.
How exactly do they “own” it?
Somebody has been spending too much time chatting with their LLM.
Board membership
She is a member of the Board of Directors of Stanford University Management Company,[45] the university’s endowment, the Board of Trustees of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,[46] the Board of Directors of The Council on Foreign Relations,[9] the Board of Directors of Bloomberg Philanthropies,[47] and the Board of Directors of The Blackstone Group.[48] She previously served on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University,[49] the Borrowing Advisory Committee of the United States Treasury,[50] and the Board of Trustees of the Economic Club of New York.[51] She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution,[52] and the Economic Strategy Group at the Aspen Institute.[53]
Political views
Porat supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2008 and 2016, hosting fundraisers for her at the Dakota in New York City.[54]
In 2011, Porat expressed her support for increased taxes on the wealthy and declared on the topic of significant spending decreases that “we cannot cut our way to greatness”.[55]
In March 2025, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie named Porat as co-chair of “The Partnership for San Francisco” alongside Laurene Powell Jobs.[56]
Gotta love liberals being liberals. You can always count on em being complete wastes of space in the face of fascism.
Dems are PR for the oligarchs, Republicans are their secretaries
Google’s fucked.
Ive actually notice this with gemini vs copilot vs chatgpt. Gemini had the most wierd bias and such and while I take everything with a grain of salt ai wise its more so with gemini. I think I use it the most though as I want to see what it will say about something.
“Don’t be evil.” Lol.
Don’tbe evilDon’tbe evil 😈
Oh, look, all those “climate pledges” over the past decade or so are in the bin as soon as they think it’s socially acceptable to do so.
It’s almost like corporations don’t give AF and will burn society down for a few bucks.
It’s wild that “we’re cooked” started as straight meme terminology but now literally describes the future of the human race
This is the type of shit that made me walk away from Android and Google, not that Apple is any better per se, but I just can’t ethically support Google anymore.
Make Vigilantism Great Again.
The ghouls of capitalism will prop up, defend, and fund fascists until the end. They need to be firmly taxed and regulated if we are to have any chance. Even if, chances are increasingly fleeting.
