Revision summary
The CEO’s first duty is to publish the 48 percent, audit data centres, and freeze vanity AI training. Ethical issues include climate justice, greenwash, owner conflict, host-community harm and future persons. A penalty is logically needed to price atmospheric harm; it is unethical if it is a Northern club hitting only ABC. Fair accountability is a sector cap, independent levy, and repair of the host grid. Balance means smaller models, additional clean power, water caps and an honest 2030, not offsets as eraser.
Model answer
Introduction
You are CEO and majority shareholder of ABC Incorporated, the second-largest technology firm in the world, sited in the Third World. Activists, regulators and the public already distrust the footprint. In 2023, greenhouse gases rose 48 percent against 2019, mainly because AI data centres drink power that ordinary search never did. Net zero by 2030 is on the wall. The curve on the wall goes the other way. This is innovation versus a livable commons, with your name on both.
Body
(a) Immediate response
The immediate response is not a slogan and not a hide. Acknowledge the 48 percent in public numbers, not a fog of “intensity”. Commission an independent energy and GHG audit of every data centre, with scope 1, 2 and material 3, and publish the method. Freeze new training runs that have no named social use until the board sees the megawatt price. Name a board climate committee that you do not chair alone, because you are majority owner and the conflict is obvious. Talk to workers and host communities before a press note. Open a line to the regulator with a time-bound abatement plan: renewable PPAs, waste-heat, water, siting. Do not fire the sustainability lead for telling the truth. Do not buy cheap offsets as a 2023 eraser. Jonas’s responsibility to the future starts as this week’s kilowatt.
(b) Ethical issues
Climate justice: luxury AI inference for ads while a heat-belt host country loses crop and water. Intergenerational duty: 2030 net zero was a promise to people not yet born. Truth versus greenwash: a target that rises 48 percent is a lie of atmosphere. Power and opacity: models that cannot be audited still bill the grid. Conflict of interest: CEO-majority shareholder loves growth that heats the commons. Workers and communities near plants: jobs versus smoke and water. Global fairness: a Third World siting can be development or a pollution haven for a world-scale firm. Human dignity in AI: energy is not the only ethics; bias and surveillance ride the same racks. Stakeholder set: users, employees, host public, future persons, investors, rival giants, the atmosphere as a silent stakeholder (Leopold’s land ethic).
(c) Penalty by technological giants — why a real consequence is necessary
The stem says the company has been identified to be penalized by technological giants. The ethical task is not to whine and not to volunteer a suicide that only ABC pays while Northern rivals keep training. Logical arguments for a necessary penalty (or equivalent hard consequence). Without a cost, the 48 percent is rational profit. Economics 101 and Mill agree that harm to the commons must be priced. A penalty that funds grid decarbonisation in the host country is repair, not theatre. Equal treatment: if giants club together to crush a Southern competitor while their own AI curves also rise, that is protectionism wearing a green coat, and you must say so with data. Ethical arguments. Integrity means accepting proportionate liability you caused. Justice means CBDR inside the industry: historical emitters and present luxury models share the bill. Necessity of a penalty is the necessity of a rule that binds the strong. You convince by publishing your inventory, accepting an independent levy or science-based cap, challenging a selective club fine in a fair forum, and offering to join a sector standard that includes water and land, not only a press fine. Kant: a maxim of unpunished atmospheric theft cannot be universal. Gandhi: means of the penalty must not be a secret boycott that starves workers while founders keep jets.
(d) Measures to balance AI innovation and footprint
Measure what matters: energy per useful task, water, land, not only tokens. Siting: grids that are already clean, or additionality of new renewables, not paper RECs on a coal night. Model choice: smaller specialised models where a giant general model is vanity. Defer training that is advertising, not public-health or climate science. 24/7 carbon-free matching, storage, efficient cooling, no drinking-water chillers in a drought district. Open a public R&D line on efficient inference as a duty, not a CSR leaflet. Worker transition if a dirty hall closes. Governance: science-based targets with annual vote on whether 2030 still exists; if not, change the claim, do not change the thermometer. Host-state compact: tax, water cap, community audit. Innovation that cannot fit in a carbon budget is not destiny. It is a product choice.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD RISE[48 percent GHG] --> AUD[Independent audit] AUD --> CAP[Cap vanity training] PEN[Giant penalty] --> FAIR[Proportionate and sector-wide] AI[AI services] --> GRID[Clean additional power] GRID --> NZ[Honest 2030 path]
Conclusion
Tell the truth about the 48 percent, cap vanity training, and put the owner-CEO under a board that can overrule growth. A penalty is necessary as priced harm, and it must bind every giant, not only a Third World name. AI can continue where it earns its megawatts in clean power and real public use.
Quick related
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Case study. Raman is a senior IPS officer and has recently been posted as D.G. of a state. Among the various issues and problems/challenges which needed his immediate attention, the issue relating to recruitment of unemployed youth by an unknown terrorist group, was a matter of grave concern. Unemployment was relatively high in the state. A new terrorist group has emerged at the global level and launched a massive drive to recruit young unemployed people, with special focus on a particular community. Discrete inquiries through the Cyber Cell revealed that good numbers of unemployed youth are very active on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, spending 6-8 hours each day, showing sympathy and endorsing messages from contact persons of that global terrorist group. (a) What are the options available to Raman to tackle the above situation? (b) What measures would you suggest for strengthening the existing set-up to ensure that such groups do not succeed in penetrating and vitiating the atmosphere in the state? (c) In the above scenario, what action plan would you advise for enhancing the intelligence gathering mechanism of the police force?
Next question on this syllabus topic (2024 · Q8). View answer →
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Should ABC stop all AI to be ethical?
No. It should stop unpaid atmospheric theft. Public-health and grid-efficient models on additional clean power are a different file from vanity training.
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Is a rival giants’ penalty always justice?
Only if the same yardstick hits every large trainer. A selective fine that protects Northern incumbents is another conflict of interest.
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