US big tech companies claim they are carbon neutral, but aninvestigation by The Guardian found emissions related to the rapid growth of data centres needed to drive AI has seen their emissions rise more than seven-fold, the paper reported on September 15. According to a Guardian analysis, from 2020 to 2022, the real emissions from the company-owned data centres of tech giants Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple were likely 662% higher than the companies officially reported. The image conscious tech giants appear to have been lying about the environmental cost of developing the burgeoning AI busi…