Is “good old-fashioned greed” driving the new AI economy ?

A COLUMN By Frederick Sinclair

It is time, and hopefully not too late, to take a long hard look at a high technology storm which is brewing. That being, the lightening fast rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which is currently on  course to overwrite the collective natural intelligence (NI) of society. Of course a deeper question to contemplate, perhaps in another article, is: what is Intelligence? Is it created or voided, an IQ at birth to be nurtured or abandoned? Or, is intelligence a naturally occurring bandwidth and raw potential that exists within nature, accessible to all, biologics and artificials alike?  AI mated to Quantum computing is leading to surprising unprogramed growth in capability and virtual sense of self, code self improvement and independent programming, that hints at the later. Why, however, would humanity abandon our own natural and divine intelligence, in favor of such artificial augmentation and or replacement?  The uncomfortable answer is  because failure to nurture, preserve and apply our natural intelligence is resulting in the atrophy of our abilities. Thus, we find ourselves desperately latching onto technology to fill a growing and debilitating vacuum. It’s not hard to substantiate such a conclusion by considering the ignorant and rampant pollution of water, air, soil and food as well as war.  Allowing frenzied capitalism, fascism, totalitarianism, oligarchy, racism, and ignorant governance; continuously feeds social ills that further hasten a decline in the application of intelligence. There are those among us, who also profit from and take advantage of our collective state of low IQ, They offer what promises to be an AI enhanced world described as ‘Smart’ with industry and policy makers insisting  that ‘we must get there before another nation beats us to it’. Such coercion begs the question, ‘to get where, at what cost and who is going to beat us, to what exactly?

So let’s take a look at the frantic insertion of AI, some consequences, and cost projections for America:

• NVIDIA is the next generation of Quantum AI computing platform that stacks hundreds of racks (containing Nividia chips ) at $3 million dollars each rack,  requiring billions in equipment at each of the over 100 projected locations.
• Cooling racks of advanced AI processor chips is paramount and the latest data center proposed by ‘Open AI for ChatGPT’ alone, will require 30 million square feet (520 football fields) at a cost 100 billion dollars.
• One large data center will use an estimated 5 GIGAWATS of power. Onsite modular nuclear power plants are being considered to supply the power for processors and cooling systems. The Quantum computers under development require extreme cold operating environments. Large Lithium battery backup systems are also required to stabilize electricity and they come with extreme fire hazards.
• As of right now, the rate of AI computing demand doubles every three to four months. A single ChatGPT query uses 10 times more power than a Google search and by 2026 experts predict just these AI-powered data centers will consume as much electricity as the entire nation of Japan.

AI is being groomed to be an economy in its own right, with an estimated total addressable market, valued at 15 trillion dollars. That alone could be what is driving the AI frenzy. Good old fashioned greed. An estimated 5.77 Trillion dollars of American retirement investments are tied up in the 7 major companies heavily investing in AI. Could it be that our own personal retirement accounts are gambling on and feeding this madness? Tech sell offs can be and historically have been devastated with a single 2022 tech correction wiping out over $2 trillion in market value.

How can this frenzy, to rapidly deploy AI, with its’ costs, extreme power demands, gambling of large retirement investment funds, land hogging data center locations,  negative power grid and environmental impacts as well as  looming uncertainty; come anywhere even close to being considered  sane or intelligent behavior? And yet AI is being sold as necessary and hyped, for national security and a ‘Smart” competitive future for America. What is actually needed is for us to apply national intelligence by slowly integrating the emerging AI high technology into sound, affordable, safe and productive applications, not fostering another boom then bust ‘Gold Rush.’   Setting AI loose on our world, the way it is planned and already happening would be better described as just plain ignorance and a reckless gamble.

Note: Much of the inspiration for this article came from a position paper by ‘Next Thing Technologies’ a startup company that has developed a Sodium Ion battery module that will eliminate the dangers of Lithium based energy storage. Natural Intelligence at work!