AI Claims It’s Saving the Climate — But Hard Evidence Is Still Nowhere to Be Found

The UN Climate Change Conference in Antalya kicks off today, with AI placed front and center on the climate action agenda.

The host nation is calling on all countries to commit to designing, powering, and deploying AI in ways that support climate action. Mary Nichols, Distinguished Counsel at UCLA School of Law and former chair of the California Air Resources Board, and Jeremy Tamanini, founder of sustainable research consulting firm Dual Citizen, lay it out plainly in an op-ed for MIT Technology Review: so far, the global industry is nowhere near using AI to deliver real, meaningful cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. AI companies love to put out rosy optimistic promises, but the reality is far less impressive. Original article

Forest Restoration Doesn’t Rely on Single-Species Plantations

Tropical forests are Earth’s largest terrestrial carbon sink, storing roughly 40% of all land-based carbon. Daisy Dent, senior scientist at ETH Zurich and forest ecologist, is part of an international research network whose work is to map plant and animal interaction networks and figure out why some forests can recover after being disturbed.

Their goal is to find a low-cost, high-impact alternative to typical carbon credit programs, which often plant only one single tree species across vast areas of land. Over more than a decade of research, Dent has found these large-scale single-species projects can be expensive mistakes: more resilient forests can regenerate naturally over decades, growing back into ecosystems that absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Original article

Today’s Quick Reads

• Nvidia is investigating its own CEO. Per a New York Times report, Jensen Huang has admitted to an intimate relationship with a person suspected of being a Chinese spy; CNBC says Nvidia’s pre-market share price dropped 5%; the Wall Street Journal also notes Huang’s children hold positions at Nvidia.
• Democrats plan to launch a new round of investigations into big tech, with reports saying the probe will start with Apple, Meta, and Elon Musk’s companies. Vox reports they hope to use the pushback against power-hungry data centers to rein in the AI industry.
• The UN’s annual climate conference starts today. Nature points out this is the first summit held after the global community confirmed the planet will exceed the 1.5°C warming threshold.

Connecting your fridge to the internet is now looking like a terrible misstep. The Atlantic writes that who is behind the recent spate of hacking incidents, and even whether they are connected to each other, is still unclear. NPR cites experts saying this should sound a major wake-up call for the industry.

• Tesla is set to scrap the Cybertruck. Wired’s blunt eulogy says it is unloved, unwanted, and utterly absurd. It was featured on MIT Technology Review’s 2025 list of the worst tech failures.
• Iran may attack undersea internet cables if the US escalates tensions again, the Financial Times reports, citing signals picked up from several roaming oil tankers.
• Chinese AI labs are not faring well when recruiting staff in Silicon Valley. Per a Rest of World report, startups including MiniMax and Moonshot are fighting an uphill battle to fill positions at their US offices.
• Online piracy is making a comeback. The Verge says this time around, the drive to archive content is at least as big a motivating force as people wanting to get media for free.
• How do you land on Phobos, where there is barely any gravity? IEEE Spectrum explains how Japan’s MMX mission plans to pull off the attempt.
• Carolyn Marvin from Philadelphia is going to court for blocking delivery robots, and has become a local hero. The Guardian reported on the story.

One Line Quote

Jensen Huang apologized in a mass email sent to all Nvidia employees, which was obtained by the Washington Post. He wrote: “Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life. My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility.”

AI Is Also Breaking Into the Music Space

Image: STUART BRADFORD

AI models are entering a creative sector that is particularly vulnerable to disruption: music. AI-generated works, ranging from orchestral pieces to heavy metal, could seep into daily life far more thoroughly than any previous AI product. These tracks will mix into streaming playlists, party and wedding song lists, and film soundtracks, and many listeners may not even notice who — or what — created them. Original article