Climate advocate Al Gore points to job-loss and safety alarms from OpenAI and Anthropic staff, not data center power demand.

Al Gore said the real risk from artificial intelligence is not the power demand or emissions from data centers, but the warnings that leaders inside the AI industry have issued about job losses and other societal threats. The climate advocate made the argument in a TechCrunch interview with Lila Preston, head of growth equity at Generation Investment Management.

Gore has said data center emissions warrant serious attention without causing panic. He points to scale: all AI data centers together produce only a fraction of the emissions from uncovered landfills. Air conditioning already consumes more electricity each year than the entire European Union, and the International Energy Agency expects that demand to triple by 2050 as ownership grows in hot, fast-growing regions.

Gore said he worries that some hyperscalers are building new methane turbines because those plants lock in decades of fossil fuel generation. He prefers companies that supply energy needs with renewables and batteries, and he expects more firms to move in that direction because renewables increasingly rank as the cheapest option available. Operators siting data centers should weigh that long-lived cost and fuel risk.

Gore ties bipartisan opposition at planning-commission meetings to automation anxiety and job losses, not carbon emissions. He cited experts inside OpenAI and Anthropic who have tried to alert the public about those threats. The next signal will be whether hyperscalers and policymakers respond to those warnings or focus only on power and emissions.

What matters

• Al Gore told TechCrunch that AI data center emissions matter far less than warnings from AI industry leaders.
• Operators planning gas plants should weigh long-lived fossil lock-in against cheaper renewables and batteries.
• Watch whether hyperscalers choose renewables and batteries or keep building methane turbines for AI demand.

Why it matters

Watch whether hyperscalers choose renewables and batteries or keep building methane turbines for AI demand.

This GenAI News article was prepared in original wording using reporting and materials published by TechCrunch AI. Source reference: https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/16/al-gore-has-a-surprisingly-calm-take-on-the-ai-data-center-backlash/.

Drafted by the GenAI News review pipeline.