I am indulging myself in this analysis knowing full well I risk sounding like one of those fools who wrote off computers as a nineties fad.
The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, certainly seems to think I won’t be able to hack it. Nonetheless, I shall try.
“I believe the future is going to be so bright that no one can do it justice by trying to write about it now; a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity,” Sam Altman writes.
I am not a tech reporter, nor do I want to be. But, whether I like it or not, the world’s wealthiest are betting big on artificial intelligence. An unfathomable amount of money is changing hands as we speak. And wherever that kind of money goes, it is my duty to follow.
The Trump administration made a meal out of a $500 billion private investment in a data hub known as ‘Stargate.’ Stargate’s backers include this article’s greatest critic, Sam Altman.
The European Commission pledged to mobilise a total of €200 billion for AI investments in Europe. French president Emmanuel Macron stated that private investors will inject €100 billion into his country’s AI sector. And that’s not mentioning all the other players like China, South Korea, and Japan.
Tech companies argue that such investment is essential for the purposes of advancing this technology, and their intense lobbying efforts across the globe have clearly paid off.
There is just one logistical hiccup – the gargantuan amount of power that is consumed by these data centres. That hiccup brings another in short order. We are dependent on fossil fuel use, the main factor driving climate change.
In the above-quoted sermon, Altman dedicates just one paragraph to ‘fixing the climate’, as he puts it. That’s a 35 word quote from a text that runs 1109 words in total.
“Although it will happen incrementally, astounding triumphs – fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics – will eventually become commonplace. With nearly-limitless intelligence and abundant energy – the ability to generate great ideas, and the ability to make them happen – we can do quite a lot,” the CEO writes.
Well, isn’t that interesting.
Let’s start with the first problem before going to the second one.
According to a report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) this month, global electricity demand rose by 4.3% in 2024 and is forecast to continue to grow at close to 4% “out to 2027.”
“Over the next three years, global electricity consumption is forecast to rise by an unprecedented 3,500 TWh. This corresponds to adding more than the equivalent of Japan to the world’s electricity consumption each year,” the report notes.
The biggest hunger for more electricity comes from China, with emergent powerhouses like India following suit. The authors of the report note that China’s drive to corner the renewables market and develop massive data centres in particular were key drivers of this surge.
As you can guess from the sheer hundreds of billions of euros being tossed around to fund AI initiatives, China isn’t the only player in the game.
The report goes on to explain that, though data centres will play a key role in driving electricity demand across the globe, the emissions generated by the increased demand for electricity should be mostly offset by a corresponding surge in renewable energy sources.
That optimism comes with a few caveats: the increased volatility of weather patterns across the globe (a result of climate change) is a direct threat to our strained energy systems. The demand from power-hungry data centres is also difficult to predict.
To be clear – spoiler alert – I’m not a fan of the idea of throwing ungodly amounts of money at a machine that can learn things terrifyingly quickly. As impressive as that may be, I find it extremely difficult to get behind the idea that this technology is worth turning the planet into a furnace.
Altman seems to believe we’re well on our way to developing rational intelligence within these systems. Right now, these systems can respond to the prompts we give them.
What Altman wants is a system that can think, or at least, simulate thinking so well it becomes practically indistinguishable from the real thing.
What none of these Silicon Valley technologists have bothered to explain is how we’re going to get there without incinerating our planet with climate change. The best answer so far seems to be ‘oh don’t worry, our AI will solve everything.’
Fifty years ago, everybody was optimistic about technological advances because most people weren’t aware of the devastating impact of climate change. It must have been pretty easy to think the boom would last forever, that the next great advancement is always around the corner.
We are now at a point where climate scientists have had to find increasingly creative ways to spell out our impending doom. We are pushing way past the planet’s tolerance levels for our crap and AI may just tip us over the edge.
Well, if the god-machines are reading this, I hope they reach the same conclusion I’ve reached: that these CEOs are so obsessed with winning the AI race that they will drag humanity off a cliff if they have to, and the only way to prevent that is to remove the CEOs. I, Robot, anyone?
Having aired those concerns, I did note with interest that the French government is selling its local champions like MistralAI’s Le Chat by claiming that AI investments will be powered by the country’s burgeoning nuclear industry.
I’m no stranger to greenwashing, so alarm bells were ringing the minute Emmanuel Macron said it.
Then, an idea: why not experiment with the technology and ask the robot for answers? Surely, Le Chat would be smart enough to tell me whether its creators are feeding it with nuclear power, right?
“Mistral AI has not explicitly stated that it is powered by nuclear energy,” the bot confesses.
What about renewables? I decided to push it and share my concerns about using AI in the context of climate change.
Tellingly, the robot was coy about it. As you can see from the chat transcript, it took me a total of three questions and two direct call outs for Le Chat to explicitly admit that “there is no direct confirmation that Mistral AI is powered by renewable energy.”
That’s still less time than what I spend on fighting the Maltese government for answers, but there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth: so far, it’s all greenwashing.
And that’s just one smaller company based in France. The fact is that the US has pledged to reopen the floodgates for oil and gas, explicitly naming its manic rush to go for gold in the AI race as a significant part of the rationale behind that decision.
Though China’s immense shift to renewable energy is incomparable in scale anywhere else in the world, its dependency on fossil fuels remains.
If I look at the bigger picture, all I see is snake oil that’s being sold as a transhumanist antidote. An elixir that will nurse us back to health and move us towards a better future.
It is a developing technology that’s got all our attention right when we most need to focus on far more pressing issues like combating climate change.
Considering Sam Altman is the one with more money than God, I hope he’s right and I’m wrong.
If I’m wrong, we’ll look back at this article and laugh about how stupid I was to even think of writing it. I’ll take all the flak I need to take with a sigh of relief.
If Altman’s wrong, we’ll have burned the world for the sake of shareholder value and humouring Silicon Valley’s whims.
If humankind is going to let AI take decisions on its own initiative, then where does responsibility lie?
The only rational response is that AI shouldn’t make those decisions, which leads to the obvious: why does one need AI in the first place, if one is reluctant to rely on its decision making capabilities?
That’s just it, isn’t it? All I see from these titans of the tech industry is wanting to reap all of the profits without any of the collective responsibility that must be baked into such technology.
I think AI will revolutionise the way we work, educate ourselves, and live. Through quantum computing (paired with AI) it is possible to make new and important scientific discoveries that will reshape our current comprehension of science and pave way to better technologies for energy harvesting and generation. I think the long-term gains are worth the cost over the short-term.
AI will change the way governments work (as a result of AI agents) and will hopefully lead to a more inclusive and less restrictive society that is able to adapt over time to one’s needs and fuel individual growth. This is the end goal. Of course with change comes resistance.
There are many ways one can use and run AI. One may download an open-source pre-trained AI model like Qwen-2.5 (by Alibaba Cloud [China]) to his device and run it locally on local hardware. It is then one’s choice whether or not to use renewable energy to run such software and hardware and without handing out any data to any server via analytics. Of course using a readily-made interface that is hosted on a server outside their control is very convenient and accessible to most users but comes with a loss of privacy.
Most importantly developing AI is a creative field in itself where one cements his ideas and ways of expression and thinking into something repeatable that survives death. I do not believe that we as humans are a set of instructions. Our minds are able to evolve and grow and thus we can get to know ourselves more and live better using such technology as the “system” adapts to us. It’s a possibility anyway.
https://youtu.be/4GLSzuYXh6w?si=_89mVf5szHuSpUcv
With regards to climate change, if the billionares and trillionaires could care less, do you think this is an actual problem that we as humans are facing? I tend to believe that the world goes through phases and sometimes gets hotter and sometimes gets colder. There is no direct evidence that we as humans are causing any global warming or cooling, but some scientists wish to sell that idea. I frankly don’t buy it myself.