Artificial intelligence will be incompatible with anti-fossil energy activism

Like it or not, the age of artificial intelligence has arrived, transforming from a science fiction fantasy to the cornerstone of the future world economy.

Artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies such as quantum computing will soon become so pervasive throughout society that we will wonder how we were ever able to exist without them. Like mobile phones and the internet, AI will fundamentally change our world and the human experience – hopefully for the better.

By far the biggest obstacle to the rise of AI is the misguided energy policy that governments across the West have embarked on in recent decades. The march toward net carbon dioxide emissions and the insistence that we replace fossil fuel-based energy sources with so-called renewable energy sources like wind and solar pose the biggest threat to an AI-based future.

In other words, the massive and thoughtless push by climate alarmists to switch almost overnight from reliable and affordable energy sources like oil, natural gas and coal to green energy not ready for prime time is incompatible. with the large amount of energy. that AI will demand in the coming decades.

Don’t take my word for it. To date, many tech experts have said exactly the same thing. From Mark Zuckerberg to Elon Musk and many others, there is a consensus among Silicon Valley leaders that AI will demand a huge increase in demand for reliable and cheap energy.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, one of the world’s loudest voices for the transition to green energy, has even changed his tune in recent months. “These AI data centers will require more energy than anything we could ever imagine,” Fink said. “We in the G7 do not have enough power.”

So what is the solution? How can we ensure that we have enough energy to power the mega data centers that AI needs, while ensuring that we have enough energy to meet the needs of American households, businesses and everything else?

First, we must stop the drive to move from an energy grid based primarily on fossil fuels to one that relies on unaffordable, unreliable, and inexhaustible wind and solar power. As of this writing, wind and solar account for only 14 percent of the total energy consumed in the U.S. In their current form, wind and solar simply cannot come close to providing enough energy to meet current demand for energy, let alone the massive growth that is sure to come when AI data centers begin to take their toll on the nation’s power grid.

Additionally, wind and solar can only provide power intermittently, meaning they can only provide power when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. AI data centers require a constant flow of power. They cannot be closed when it is cloudy or calm.

Second, we must embrace clean-burning natural gas as a sustainable energy source to meet growing demand as more AI data centers are built in the coming years. Unlike renewable sources, natural gas can provide affordable, reliable and abundant energy. Furthermore, it does not require environmentally hazardous transmission lines that stretch hundreds of miles through pristine habitats.

And, in what can be described as a positive reaction, technology experts claim that AI can help discover new natural gas deposits.

According to the American Gas Association, “AI itself is helping to meet the demand for fuel created by AI data centers. The days of drilling an exploratory well in the hope that there might be natural gas at the bottom of it are long behind us. Seismic surveys allow producers to search for discoverable deposits of natural gas by generating, recording and analyzing sound waves in a process similar to how bats use echolocation to navigate or ships use sonar to search for potential obstacles. . While this process previously required highly trained human analysts to examine seismic survey returns, AI trained on the results of previous seismic surveys is being deployed to find deposits that human operators would have previously missed.

Third, we must reconsider nuclear power as a sustainable source of baseload power. “Nuclear power is the most reliable source of energy, and it’s not even close,” states the US Department of Energy.

Nuclear power is also much more environmentally friendly than wind or solar. “Wind farms require up to 360 times the land area to produce the same amount of electricity as a nuclear power plant…Solar photovoltaic facilities require up to 75 times the land area,” reports the Nuclear Energy Institute.

The AI ​​race will be a worldwide event. China, Russia and many other countries are pouring resources into their AI programs. The US must not allow these adversarial nations to gain the upper hand in the critical competition for AI supremacy.

Chris Talgo is the editorial director at the Heartland Institute.