For some years now, I've been saying and writing that we are now in the third of the great revolutions in mankind's development. The first was the Agricultural Revolution, when humans went from being mostly hunter-gatherers to being farmers. This gave rise to the first towns and cities, the first centralized governments, the first systems of writing and mathematics. The second was the Industrial Revolution, wherein more and more people lived urban, not rural lives. This second stage saw the rise of factories, of mega-cities, and the first phases of our modern, technological lifestyle, with the advent of things like the automobile and the airplane.
Now, we are in the Information Revolution, which may be the most significant change yet. The internet has changed the way we do everything, from business transactions to socializing. Not all the changes have been for the better, but neither were all the changes in the previous two great revolutions. We make the best of these things, and now, in just the last few years, the Information Revolution just hit the "TURBO" button.
Right here at RedState, we've seen a lot of discussion about the Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution. This has taken the internet and supercharged it, and the implications are far-reaching - and so is the coming political fight over it, mostly over the huge, energy-hungry data centers on which AI depends.
A recent Master Resource piece by Steve Goreham describes the three essential legs on which AI rests:
The artificial intelligence revolution relies on three core components: vast computer processing power, huge databases of information, and innovative AI algorithms. Since the ENIAC computer at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, the processing speed of computers has increased almost one trillion times. The internet revolution of the late 20th century provided an ocean of digital information, allowing today’s AI systems to access billions of data files. And innovations such as neural networks, large learning models, and the parallel processing of “graphics processing unit” integrated circuits enable machines to mimic human intelligence.
There's another aspect of all this: Energy. More on that in a moment. Mr. Goreham also offers how AI has already affected our lives:
Today’s rapidly improving AI systems are remarkable. They can translate between dozens of languages, assemble prose and poetry, generate audio, images, and videos, and answer factual questions. AI language models score better than humans on the Uniform Bar Exam and the U.S. medical licensing exam. AI systems continue to improve at a rapid pace and have begun to change every business and industry.
AI is being used to identify the molecular structure of future drugs, map human DNA, develop new materials for batteries, enable self-driving vehicles, provide intelligence for robots, and guide autonomous weapons. AI-based software aides are being deployed in business, legal, science, engineering, technology, and health industries. Experts project a coming productivity boom in these professions.
There will be downsides to all this. My wife and I are hearing a lot of complaining from two of our daughters, who are both freelance graphic artists, and who are seeing their livelihoods slipping away due to increasing AI capabilities. But out of all this, it seems it's the energy requirements and location of the huge data centers that are going to be the most contentious issues in the next few years.
Read More: Artificial Intelligence: It's All About the Power
Are AI Data Centers the Future of Farmlands?
There will be a lot of NIMBYism, of course, around the location of these facilities. Full disclosure: There was even talk of building a massive data center only a few miles from our rural Alaska community - yes, in rural Alaska. The hue and cry was probably audible in Juneau, and the idea got shelved, and this kind of thing will no doubt be repeated in many other small towns and rural communities; most of us live out here because we like things the way they are.
But how many old factories in our big cities stand abandoned? How many blighted areas might be rejuvenated by the construction of data centers and the jobs that come with them?
Any real property always, in time, rises to its most profitable use. If there is a need for these data centers, they will be built somewhere.
But powering them? Ah, that's where the political fight comes in. These facilities use enormous amounts of energy, and already Democrats in Congress are trying to stamp the brakes on data center development, even as the Trump administration is embracing AI as part of our technological future.
President Trump states that America will be “the world’s number one superpower in artificial intelligence.” To win the AI battle against China, the Trump administration is urging big data center companies to build their own gas-fired power plants. Trump is also promoting a nuclear resurgence, issuing executive orders last May that call for the US to quadruple nuclear capacity by 2050.
But progressives and environmental groups are lining up against AI and data centers. Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez introduced the “Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act,” seeking to halt data center construction. Last December, 230 environmental organizations also sent a letter to Congress calling for a data center construction halt. Senator Sanders says “The moratorium will give democracy a chance to catch up, and ensure that the benefits of technology work for all of us, not just the 1%.”
Energy is the key, and while President Trump is calling for natural gas-powered generation and more nuclear power, the left will never acknowledge that nuclear power is the obvious solution. The advent of small modular reactors (SMRs) seems tailor-made for this application, proving once more that we solve today's problems with tomorrow's technology. Dedicated reactors for each data center - that's the needful solution.
Both the daffy old Bolshevik from Vermont and the former bartender from New York are unaccountably among that 1 percent, despite their relatively modest government salaries - go figure. But they are already on the losing side of this fight. AI is the coming wave that is going to roll right over Bernie and AOC. The Trump administration is at least making an effort to embrace it, but either way, this toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. But the political war over AI is coming, and it's vitally important to note that, despite their describing themselves as "progressive," the left is once more standing firmly against progress.
