In the past few years, AI has taken the world by storm. After the launch of ChatGPT, all major tech companies have been trying to develop their own AI and outcompete each other. Even companies that have nothing to do with technology have been striving to work with AI, partly to make their production faster, and partially to please investors who do not want to see the company they have a stake in fall behind something that could be an inflection point in human innovation. 

There are many conversations around the use cases of AI and if AI will cause an existential threat to human beings in the workforce and beyond. However, one of the logistical challenges that we are currently facing with AI is energy. AI takes a lot of energy to run and the faster we build these models the more energy we are going to need to power all the new tools that we are creating. The purpose of this article is to get people thinking about energy and AI, and to add a perspective that has not been talked about much in public discussion: is there a chance that we are building energy facilities too fast?

AI is undoubtedly an arms race. We do not yet know what it will be capable of, but as a nation we want to find out on our terms. We do not want to risk letting an adversarial country be the first to have access to technology that we cannot currently understand. AI could be used as a cyberweapon; having the ability to knock out our communications and our energy in one fell swoop. This being said, China is currently leading the energy development rate. They now produce more than four times the energy through solar and wind that the United States produces and they are starting to advance their energy development through other sources such as nuclear reactors. China already has higher energy capabilities than the United States and they are growing their energy at a rate that is faster than the United States.

This is cause for worry if energy is being equated with AI development. There have been many members of the Trump Administration that adhere to this math and therefore believe that our largest priority should be energy development. Their logic is that if there is more energy we could power more AI and with powering more AI we will achieve AI dominance through continually advancing models. Therefore, there is a nationwide race to develop energy as quickly as possible: drilling for more oil, tearing down regulations for nuclear facilities, and pushing private companies to take on the risk to develop nuclear plants in the United States.

Despite this movement, there is a world where AI gets more efficient as we get more advanced. There is no argument that AI is getting smarter, and currently the way our trajectory is looking is that as the AI gets smarter it uses more energy. However, this is not the general trend we see with technology: cars, computers, phones. Each technology that we have developed has gotten more energy efficient as it has gotten more advanced: longer battery life, more mileage from one gallon of gas. It is not irrational to believe that AI will follow this same trend. We are in the early stages of AI and as it gets better it may need less energy to power it. So, if we build all these new energy sources, but develop AI that does not need them we will be stuck with a ton of energy that we do not have the ability to use. We are building so fast without conceptualizing the fact that we may not actually need all this energy in the future. 

Personally, I am in the camp that we should continue to build out energy. We do not know when AI will become less energy dependent. We also do not know if there will even be this point in our lifetime. AI may need to build their own AIs before energy efficiency is discovered for this tool. We do not have the privilege to sit back and wait for it to become energy efficient; we do not want to be the country that is lagging behind on this scale of technical revolution.

Why write this? As you can see, I agree with the mainstream opinion. I believe the AI revolution is an important step in our country’s future and we should build out energy plants to meet the growing demands that we have from AI. I am writing this to question government haste. There are times when the government should be acting fast, this I believe is one of them. However, with fast action there is quick change, and quick change can lead to people losing power right before their eyes. We never want the government to act quickly without us questioning if it is really necessary. We must question each hasty action. Energy development may be needed to keep up with AI demands, but if the government spins this into a next step that involves buying land for these plants then we must weigh out the pros and cons of that before we fall in line and agree. Governments do not fall in a day, it is a domino effect of hasty decision after hasty decision. That is why I wanted to write this. I want to implore you to question what your government is doing. To critically think about the actions that are being taken and to step outside of the propaganda that political figures will sell you to push their agenda. We the people have power, but we the people only keep this power if we hold our representatives accountable. We can only do this by staying informed and ensuring that each decision is taken for the benefit of the people, and not a power grab for the officials.