On our Doorstep

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magritte 

 

 

 

 

We had four out of five of my partner's brothers for Thanksgiving this year. Besides the usual boisterous cacophony of Idaho testosterone which I have learned to accept if not genuinely enjoy, a new meme has arrived in these circles. For the  American right has embraced the idea that to go forward with our current pace towards artificial intelligence, society must give up on removing carbon from our civilization and instead embrace whatever we must to power the new technological race for superiority in cyberspace. In short, electric power must be nuclear, or coal, or perhaps batteries.

Powering chips with chips powered by the sun, although elegant, is seen as unrealistic.

It was 21 years ago that I posted about the Singularity. 

The concept of a technological singularity as it is known today is largely credited to Dr. Vernor Vinge, a mathematician, computer scientist, and science fiction author who is best known for his Hugo award-winning novel, A Fire Upon the Deep, and for his 1993 essay "The Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences.

Vinge's essay contains the following frequently-quoted statement:

"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended."  Vinge wrote that thirty three years ago. 

In Texas, we have demonstrated that Renewable Energy and solid state stationary storage coupled with electric vehicle mobile storage supported with  modest amounts of Legacy Energy can meet the needs of an advanced society at a price that we can afford. To prove it, AI factories are popping up everywhere and putting pressure on our 90 GW grid.  And they are impressive consumers of our low prices.

But no Texan voted to bring these behemoths in to suck our affordable power.

This from Oil Price. (yes, Oil Price)

"The Cloud" might be the greatest branding trick in history. It sounds fluffy, ethereal, and notably light.

It implies that our digital lives…our emails, our crypto wallets, our endless scrolling…exist in some vaporous layer of the atmosphere, detached from earthly constraints. But if you actually drive out to Loudoun County, Virginia, or stare at the arid plains of Altoona, Iowa, you realize the Cloud is actually just a very big, very loud, and very hot factory.

We’ve been telling ourselves a lovely story about the energy transition. We were retiring coal plants, building wind farms, and decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions. It was all going according to plan."

But in comes Nvidia and its H100 GPU which uses 100 kW instead of 10 kW 

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global electricity demand from data centers is projected to more than double by 2030. This is the same as the entire annual electricity use of a country like Japan.

The invisible hand is hitting a concrete wall.

We have effectively moved from powering a toaster to powering a neighborhood, all inside the same metal box. Air cooling…fans blowing over hot metal…doesn't work anymore. Air just isn't physically dense enough to move that much heat away.

We are now plumbing data centers like chemical refineries, running liquid coolant loops directly to the silicon die.

The irony is palpable. We spent billions trying to kill coal, only to have the most futuristic technology on earth, AI, throw it a lifeline. In places like Virginia or Kansas, utilities are delaying the retirement of coal plants. They simply cannot risk the grid instability when a gigawatt-scale data center comes online.

The "future" is being powered by the "past."

Obviously, this is the view of an Oil and Gas Journal.

Experts stress that the effects of climate change are not a distant future problem, but a present crisis that requires urgent and wide-ranging measures. And moving to a future where Climate Change management becomes subordinate  is a recipe for not only calamity, but authoritarianism. But AI must also be managed.

Elon Musk has repeatedly called AI “humanity’s biggest existential threat.”  He likens unchecked AI development to “summoning the demon,” emphasizing that once a superintelligent entity exists, controlling it might be impossible if its goals diverge from ours. 

Key points from Musk’s cautionary outlook include:

1. AI Alignment: Ensuring AI goals match human values — no small task.
2. Regulatory Oversight: Musk urges proactive laws and guidelines akin to nuclear safety measures.
3. Human-AI Symbiosis: Through ventures like Neuralink, Musk aims to merge human intellect with AI, perhaps mitigating the risk of obsolescence.

The future is uncertain but undeniably fast-approaching. By investing in education, ethical governance, scenario planning, and collaborative innovation, we can guide these explosive developments toward a future that enhances human life without undermining it. Whether or not the singularity arrives in 2045 or later, the decisions we make today will shape how these technologies intersect with economics, society, and — ultimately — the core of our humanity. 

The recent ugly bill by the Rs made it illegal for states to regulate AI. We can thank the Plutocrats for that.

AI must be required to comply with  Global Climate Change agreements.

Our leaders must respond or be replaced.

Because the Singularity is on our doorstep. 

And a different World is on the other side. 

And the winds of fate await. 

 

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