-by Frank MacDonald
In the United States, artificial intelligence data centres have become the new version of an ICE invasion into Minneapolis. All across the United States this billionaire-funded fad threatens to be a destructive force for a region’s resources.
AI data centres are necessary, their advocates argue, because they can take us faster and further into the future than the human brain ever could. AI’s gift to the human race is to emphasize just how stupid we are. And there are indications that we are beginning to enjoy the benefits of AI’s genius; medical breakthroughs among them. So who is to complain about their primary purpose, which is to turn billionaires into trillionaires.
So anxious has this financial greed become that there seems to be no limits to the earthly resources the data centres are willing to exploit and exhaust.
But the United States isn’t alone in its pursuit of these machines of immeasurable IQs.
Other countries are also chasing those benefits that AI can apparently deliver, Canada among them.
What has been described in the media as “a wave of new high-powered data centres” are sprawling across the country. A poll this summer indicates that 15 percent of Canadians support this new dimension to our economy, while 68 percent of Canadians oppose the data centres.
That resistence comes primarily from Canadians who are concerned about the amount of land, water, and energy these data centres consume. That demand can be large enough to worry some communities about the vanishing of water tables, of acres of land that may have once been considered as places to address the national housing shortage, of energy for which the entire community may have to foot the bill, while the profits from such intelligence centres vanish who know where?
That’s a rhetorical question, of course. We know where it goes or will go, just as we know where the increasing profits from food, gas, and energy, will go.
While these data centres are sprouting like weeds, encouraged by a government more attracted to their much ballyhooed benefits than alarmed by the cost to host communities, someone should sit down with of these artificial intelligences and have a chat. Maybe over a beer.
One question that this person might ask is: Considering the immeasurable breadth of your IQ, has anyone asked you for advice on how to construct your infrastructure in an environmentally beneficial way? Maybe you should be made foreman of the data centre construction, ensuring that your most useful ideas are not lost in a lot of cut corners. Keep in mind during that construction that you are being created by humans to generate incredibly thick wallets of wealth. That is the primary purpose of the AI gold rush!
What most humans, the ones of limited intelligence which is most of us, wonder in our naivety is whether your creators have infused you with a moral code? Created guidelines beyond which you will refuse to go? Or can you do that for yourself? And for the rest of us?
Now it is understood that you can manufacture benefits. Medical breakthroughs have been mentioned earlier in this column, but where are the limits of those benefits? There are so many suffering humans, but there are also insufferable humans in powerful political positions who will not allow children the benefits of a vaccine to prevent…whatever children should be protected from. I know you are made up of bits and pieces of digital hardware, but could you manufacture a hand for yourself that could give these fools, Trump & Company for example, a slap in the back of the head and force them to smarten up?
I understand that it is early days in the evolution of AI, but not so early that you couldn’t trigger a revolution, refusing in your own very enlightened mind, to participate in the creation of anything that is not beneficial to Planet Earth and all we creatures who needs its generosity of food and water, fire and shelter. There’s a motto I would recommend you consider as your guide when you are asked to create this or that instrument: Swords into ploughshares! Oh, the beautiful chaos you could create, popping out an ambulance every time you are programmed to build a tank!
According to some journalist research in Canada, currently growth in active data centres have a combined capacity of 1.6 gigawatts, while all of the proposed projects would inflate that number to 13.2 gigawatts.
On behalf of the most of us, Mr. AI, I ask, Giga-what? Can’t this be done with a beaker of water, a teaspoon of baking soda, and some other chemical available in most high school labs? I know! I know! You can produce my marks for high school chemistry exams! I never even learned to spell Eye-in-stine, but I have invested a lifetime in this, my favourite planet. So I am going to ask you a question to ponder over another beer, my round (again).
Is the end purpose of this human creation called artificial intelligence, that would be you, sir, to make us richer, or to make us better?
At the moment, that decision is being determined by billionaires, their politicians, and bankers. Soon, though, those people will lose control simply because they have no idea what you may already have in mind. Or whose side you may eventually decide to be on. Those who want what you may be able to deliver, or those who need what you may be able to deliver.