AI- and information-centric form of civilization and control will not run on fairies and moonbeams. It will require vast amounts of electrical power. According to the Scientific American "clean" AI uses a lot of energy. A fully AI powered Google would need as much power as Ireland just to run its search engine. That does not even include the power necessary to cool the machines. "In the worst-case scenario, if we decide we’re going to do everything on AI, then every data center is going to experience effectively a 10-fold increase in energy consumption." It is no accident that 17 of the world’s top 50 power-consuming data centers are in the U.S. (15) and Canada (2).
A fully AI powered Google would need as much power as Ireland just to run its search engine.
Ironically the old, decentralized smoke-filled newsroom was 'Greener' because it ran on 12 watts of brain power in a decentralized fashion.
"The adult human brain runs continuously, whether awake or sleeping, on only about 12 watts of power. For comparison, a typical desktop computer draws around 175 watts, and a laptop somewhere around 60 watts. And the brain's power source is renewable; it's the solar energy stored in food. If the human brain were a computer, it would be the greenest computer on Earth." Unfortunately human intelligence is not up to the task of monitoring and controlling at the granularity required.
The dilemma of planetary engineering, in the rueful words of the New York Times, is "The electricity needed to run A.I. could boost the world's carbon emissions, depending on whether the data centers get their power from fossil fuels or renewable resources." But to use renewable energy you probably need AI. There is no free lunch.
"The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is capable of using." As physicist Michio Kaku has said, the power requirements of an advanced civilization must grow faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes.
Self-interest will incentivize leaders to maximize their own power.
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