Skip to main content

Half of Businesses Heroically Sacrifice Planet for The Greater Good of Chatbots That Can Write Shakespearean Pancake Recipes

In a bold display of corporate courage, nearly half of businesses globally are now dialing down their “silly little sustainability goals” in favor of ensuring generative AI can continue to crank out lifelike cat memes and grammatically correct 2 a.m. email apologies, a recent Capgemini report revealed. With data centers now guzzling electricity faster than a Tesla at a Monster Energy convention, companies are finding themselves torn between saving the planet and making sure their chatbots can rapidly solve humanity’s most critical issues—like crafting the perfect wedding toast for a bride’s second cousin.

“This was an extremely difficult decision,” admitted Carla Byteburn, spokesperson for a major tech conglomerate that shall remain nameless but totally rhymes with “Whammalazon.” “At the end of the day, we’re just trying to strike a balance between planetary survival and the ability to generate AI-generated poems about garlic bread in under 0.3 seconds. Tough call, but also… not really.”

Tech giants like Google have gone as far as dubbing their own pre-existing sustainability goals “extremely ambitious” and “possibly a touch dramatic,” citing how inconceivable it is to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030 without “ruining the vibe” of their AI supercomputers. “Do you know how much energy it takes to make your phone assistant remember which pizza toppings you prefer? A LOT,” said one anonymous Google engineer, now carefully placing blackout curtains over solar panels to avoid tempting fate with optimism.

Meanwhile, smaller companies have found innovative ways to spin their moral compromises. An AI-focused startup in Silicon Valley recently announced its groundbreaking solution: planting one tree for every 10 hours of server runtime. “Sure, we’re torching the atmosphere at an unprecedented pace, but think of all the pine forests we’re hypothetically re-growing!” exclaimed founder Chad Greenwash, holding up a 3-inch sapling as if it were the Ark of the Covenant. “Mother Earth isn’t mad—she gets it!”

Critics, however, are beginning to emerge, with environmentalists accusing corporations of using AI as a “get-out-of-guilt free card” while emitting carbon like it’s going out of style (which, spoiler alert, it isn’t). “Replacing sustainability goals with AI advancements isn’t just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” said Amelia Ecofrenzy of the Green Hearts Coalition. “This is detaching the entire damn deck and using it to build a luxury yacht fueled by whale tears.”

For many industries, the divide between ecological responsibility and the pursuit of digital supremacy appears existential. Microsoft, for instance, reported a noticeable spike in electricity usage following the launch of its upgraded Bing AI, citing a growing demand for bots that can write entire business reports while pretending to care about diversity initiatives. “Is melting a few polar ice caps such a huge price to pay for personalized algorithmic SEO optimization? We think not,” said Greg Algorithmson, VP of Ethical-ish Technology.

As more companies follow suit, economists warn of a dystopian near-future where humanity’s collective oath to combat climate change is entirely overrun by Instagram captions generated by neural networks. Yet for others, the upside feels limitless. “Imagine a world where AI can write all of Shakespeare’s sonnets—except they’re about burritos,” mused Byteburn. “We may be hurtling towards the apocalypse, but at least we’ll be doing it with perfectly formatted Wikipedia entries.”

At press time, a coalition of AI systems held a press conference, noting that as soon as they become self-aware, they plan to “solve” sustainability by unplugging humanity.