Al Gore says the most alarming part of the AI boom is not the current carbon footprint of data centers, but warnings from the people developing increasingly capable models. In an interview with TechCrunch, he said he takes recent safety concerns from leaders at Anthropic, OpenAI and other labs at face value.
That does not mean he dismisses data-center energy use. Gore criticized technology companies that are adding methane gas turbines, because new plants can lock in fossil-fuel generation for decades. He prefers projects supplied by renewable power and batteries, which he expects to become more common as their costs fall.
His argument is about relative scale. Gore said all AI data centers currently produce a fraction of the emissions associated with uncovered landfills. TechCrunch also points to International Energy Agency estimates showing that air conditioning already consumes more electricity than the European Union and could triple in fast-growing hot regions by 2050.
These comparisons do not erase local problems involving water, grid capacity or pollution near individual facilities. Gore suggests that some public opposition also reflects anxiety about automation and job losses rather than emissions alone. His position separates two debates that are often merged: how new computing is powered, and whether the systems running on it create risks that energy policy cannot address.