Good news everyone. We’re all going to be richer. Each and everyone of us. And it’s all thanks to AI.
Now there are some fuddy-duddies out there (looking at you, EU), who are doing their best to slow down progress and prevent us all from sharing in the spoils but they and all the other doubters are wrong. Elon Musk has confidently predicted that AI will increase the size of the global economy by 20-30% (roughly $20 trillion to $30 trillion – and not all of that will go just to him). Scoff if you want, but as I travel on the Loop this morning between downtown Chicago and O’Hare Airport en route to our flourishing colony on Mars, I know history will prove him right.
Those of us unfortunate enough to live in the EU will not benefit as fully from this global largesse because we are part of an organisation that believes new things should not automatically be legal and “relatively free of regulation”. Elon Musk says that here in the EU things “are generally default illegal”. That sounds like a pretty awful state of affairs if what he says is accurate.
But it’s not quite. The EU hasn’t defined new things as illegal by default, it’s merely keen to ensure that they conform to common standards and regulations if they want to be defined as legal. There’s a difference.
People like Musk and Zuckerberg want to be able to say “don’t worry, this will be fine in the end” for something to be waved through with no further scrutiny from governments or regulatory bodies. They want governments and regulatory bodies to sign up to the “move fast and break things” mantra.
The problem with this is that, at some point in the future, if it transpires that the new thing isn’t quite as fine as promised, there will be a lot more to fix than if it had been regulated in the first place. At that point, governments and regulatory bodies will be forced to assume the responsibility for fixing the consequences of the “move fast and break things” strategy they have enabled while the likes of Musk and Zuckerberg will do as close to nothing as possible.
Stop a minute to examine what Musk is arguing for. If someone introduced an innovative train, for example, that was “relatively free of regulation” compared to other trains, people might be reluctant to travel on it. In fact, there would probably be an expectation that the new innovative train should conform to existing safety standards and regulations. If the EU said “we’re tired of holding back innovation with our regulation, it’s time to set the innovators free to do what they like”, guess who would be in the firing line when something went wrong. And guess who would be dead if there was an accident?
Musk made his remarks by video link to a meeting of G20 technology ministers in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, organised by the White House, where he also focused on the massive amounts of electricity needed to power AI data centres, describing it as a “crisis of power” that was giving China the advantage. “There will be a significant power shortfall next year, not (the) distant future,” he said.
So, if we pause a moment to think about what he’s saying, Musk is stating, quite clearly, that the “crisis of power” in the very near future will be caused by AI data centres. If only we could find some way of making sure that crisis didn’t happen. How can it be overcome? This seems like a good place for the innovators to step in and deliver something that doesn’t involve electricity being redirected to power AI data centres or adding more power sources that aren’t based on renewables, such as gas turbines.
What is the impact of trying to fix that “crisis of power” at a time when the UN Environment Programme has already confirmed that global temperatures will exceed the 1.5C global warming threshold within the next few years? Reversing this “requires rapid and sustained emissions reductions, alongside ambitious adaptation to protect people, communities and ecosystems”, according to H.E. Murat Kurum, COP 31 president. How can that be achieved when AI data centres are expected to require huge amounts of additional power?
If you’re in the “move fast and break things” business, these issues might appear trivial but a lot of people are quite anxious at just how broken things might end up being.
The US administration is a great supporter of AI and data centres. Donald Trump clearly wants everyone to share in its benefits which explains his frustration, as expressed the day before the meeting, when he felt compelled to attack opponents of data centres as “backwards and poor”. As a true believer in AI, Trump is doubtless irritated that so many people in the US are refusing to grasp the golden opportunity it presents. But with a majority of people in the US now opposed to building data centres, he suddenly finds himself in the unhappy position of presiding over a country with a lot of backwards and poor people.
Maybe we’re not going to be richer after all. Ah well, there’s always Mars. See you there.
Ltd
