Al Gore says real AI risk is insider warnings, not data centers

Former vice president and investor Al Gore told TechCrunch that emissions from AI data centers are "cause for deep concern, not panic," and that the greater danger lies in the warnings coming from industry leaders themselves. Lila Preston, head of growth capital at Generation Investment Management, the firm Gore founded, sat beside him.

Gore put the numbers in perspective. Total emissions from all AI data centers combined amount to only a fraction of those from uncovered landfills worldwide. His comparison to air conditioning is accurate: the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates global cooling consumes more electricity each year than the entire European Union, and with ownership rates in the hottest, fastest-growing regions still below 15%, demand is expected to triple by 2050. Grid pressure from air conditioning will far exceed that from data centers over the same period.

That does not mean Gore ignores how these facilities are powered. "It is very concerning that some hyperscalers are jumping to new methane turbines," he said. His worry is not the AI workload itself, but that building new gas plants to meet demand locks in decades of additional fossil-fuel production. He favors companies that meet their energy needs with renewables and batteries, and expects more to move in that direction simply because renewables are becoming the cheapest option.

In Gore's view, the bipartisan opposition to data centers at planning boards across the United States stems less from carbon emissions and more from anxiety about automation poised to disrupt society in the near term. "Part of the reason for the growing opposition is driven by the fundamental fears of job loss and the other threats that experts inside OpenAI and inside Anthropic are trying to warn the public about," he said.

The wave of warnings from industry leaders that flooded headlines last week has not passed Gore by. While President Trump and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang laughed them off at a conference in Los Angeles on Monday — Trump called Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's public call to slow capability improvements a "hoax" — and Sam Altman and Elon Musk joined the warning, Gore takes them seriously. "I think we have passed the stage where some cynically suspected the apocalyptic warnings were some bizarre marketing strategy. If that was the case, I don't think that is the case now," he said. He believes Amodei is completely sincere, and that Altman and Musk were honest when they added their voices days ago. Gore, characteristically, quoted Maya Angelou: "When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time."