With governments internationally running increasingly higher deficits, the solutions reside in three scenarios:

Reduce government expenditure

Increase tax incomes

Sell assets

Traditional industrial economies such as the u.k have witnessed a reduction of their heavy industries and associated exports for many decades and become more reliant on income from services, creative industries and tourism – and whilst this seemed to be viable for a couple of decades in the u.k along with the sale of government owned businesses and utilities –  over the recent two decades has proved less fruitful with the financial crash of 2007 symptomatic of the ‘outcome’ of this 40 year economic experiment – which is still ongoing?

Switching to a new ‘industrial revolution’ is probably the best long- term solution to securing a countries economy – however, given the known issues of climate change it needs to be based on producing products that are sustainable – or even better, products that can be utilised to deliver a sustainable future.

In the u.k we have heard about and witness an increasing deployment of wind turbines, solar panels and heat pumps etc, and whilst great could also argue that not much of it is actually manufactured in the u.k for a number of reasons – but largely because the manufacturing supply base is now relatively small. Thus, the opportunity for exports and the associated benefits of foreign exchange currently from the u.k renewable energy products sector is small.

Therefore, if the ‘green’ revolution is going to prove difficult and slow in delivering exports and tax revenues to a country such as the u.k – what else can it do?

The answer seems to be AI (artificial intelligence) which is of course a subject that many governments and tech businesses have been consciously raising the profile of over the last few years in an attempt to condition populations into believing that this will provide the ‘powerhouse’ of future economies and human ‘well-being’. With industry, governments and financial institutions fully on-boarded – fast expansion of this sector is inevitable.

There is no doubt that this AI band wagon is now gaining speed and momentum albeit with various groups raising concerns over ‘fake’ profiling, loss of jobs etc – however, the most significant impact that AI will have on all of us is the exponential energy consumption required in driving this AI revolution!

You may ask yourself – ‘if this is true – why is it not been discussed’?

The answer is that in the interests of governments ‘economy and security’ – it is preferred that such ‘pertinent’ questions are not asked! After all, when the impacts of this ‘AI fiasco’ are realized in 10 years – the governments can simply revert to the usual rhetoric – ‘benefits of hindsight’ –  ‘lessons have been learned’ etc!

The other side of this ‘energy equation’ is whether the ‘green’ revolution could provide sufficient sustainable energy to power this future AI world?

The answer to this will mostly depend on what we consider to be ‘green’ energy but if it is based on ‘renewable’ energy such as solar, wind and hydro – then the answer is almost certainly NO and the reason for this is because current computing technology is very inefficient and so produces a lot of waste heat. Therefore, tech companies and governments should be investing in improving this core technology before embarking on the rapid expansion of AI.

However, I should not be so dismissive to assume that our ‘well meaning’ governments had not considered this and are not supporting solutions. Of course they have considered this and concluded that provided the future energy ‘mix’ also contains Nuclear and Geothermal power then this should fulfill all these additional energy requirement?

This brings me to reveal the ‘untold’ story of AI and climate which is that whilst most the world is finally coming to grips with the reality of greenhouse gases and  ‘global warming’ – the aspect of global warming that has not been discussed is that caused by  ‘waste heat’ emitted by the combustion of fuels – which is also released by nuclear and geothermal energy processes.

You may have noticed that there is an increasing drive towards nuclear power and although the narrative has changed slightly to pretend that the new development of  ‘small’ and cheap nuclear reactors will be less costly and more environmentally acceptable than the large units – the real reason is that they will be quick to produce and install in time for the HUGE amount of power that is about to be consumed in the current race to AI.

In conclusion, governments such as the u.k are sacrificing the environment in an effort to secure/bolster their tax incomes – whereas concentrating initially on propelling the green revolution with home produced technology and manufacturing would have a far more lucrative and sustainable outcome along with better control of government expenditure in non-productive areas.

Maybe this is a good time for us to question the meaning of ‘Intelligence’ – be it human or artificial?

 

Phil Selwyn (Founder: Water Powered Technologies)       03.09.24