The UK Labour Government has announced plans to expand development and the use of AI to extraordinary levels. Is it the “defining opportunity of our generation”, as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer professes it to be? Who will be the winners and losers?
In the tech hub of Ireland, the rise of AI could see data centres account for nearly 35 per cent of the country’s energy use by 2026. – International Energy Agency.
AI, Artificial Intelligence, is in everyday use by you. If you are on social media, for example Facebook, AI collects data on you and will recommend ‘friends’ or posts in your personal feed based on what it has assessed you will relate to. AI is used if you shop online and will come up with ‘options’ for you if you wish to make a purchase of a particular product.
It can also help you with writing, suggesting words, or changes to grammar, in an email you might be sending. All of this is supposed to make things easier for us – and sometimes it does – but it is not full proof. It can make mistakes.
AI has been a powerful tool in science with its ability to scan through thousands of pieces of data relatively quickly and picking out the information that a researcher is interested in.
Big companies soon realised that they could do away with a lot of jobs done by people and replace those tasks through AI. These jobs were at entry level, so for instance in the creative industries, those who would normally get their first chance on the bottom rung, no longer have that opportunity, they have been replaced by AI. The step up into a career has gone. AI is also being used to generate images, originally created by an artist or photographer, to produce a computer generated version, with no payment to the originator. It is a disaster for our creative sector. Who needs writers, artists, musicians when AI can plug into their original creative genius, and manufacture whatever its user has told it to do ?
The Labour Government’s Action Plan sets out how to make the UK “an AI superpower.“
They will do this by first expanding compute power by twenty times what it is today by 2030.
The government will now start delivery of a new state of the art supercomputing facility that will double the capacity of our national AI Research Resource. DSIT will immediately start to develop the business case process and proceed to lock in a site and suppliers in 2025. UK researchers and SMEs will be able to begin accessing the AI Research Resource in early 2025, using the powerful supercomputers at Bristol (Isambard AI) and Cambridge (Dawn), enabling our best and brightest to make new discoveries and help drive economic growth. AI Opportunities Action Plan
The UK’s leading scientific computing resource, Archer2, at Edinburgh University, will also be extended until November 2026.
There will be AI Growth Zones – the first one at Culham, HQ of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). This will be a public/private sector development beginning with 100MW of capacity and with plans to scale up to 500MW.
That’s a lot of power needed. Energy consumption by AI is massive. In, ‘Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?‘ researchers Alexandra Sasha Luccioni, Yacine Jernite, Emma Strubell state:
Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of commercial AI products based on generative, multi-purpose AI systems promising a unified approach to building machine learning (ML) models into technology. However, this ambition of “generality” comes at a steep cost to the environment, given the amount of energy these systems require and the amount of carbon that they emit.
They found that the electricity used by Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google doubled between 2017 and 2021.
The rise of powerful AI will be either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity. We do not yet know which. – Professor Stephen Hawking
The United Nations Environment programme concedes that whilst AI has great benefits in charting and finding solutions to some of the world’s environmental emergencies, it produces its own set of problems.
The proliferating data centres that house AI servers produce electronic waste. They are large consumers of water, which is becoming scarce in many places. They rely on critical minerals and rare elements, which are often mined unsustainably. And they use massive amounts of electricity, spurring the emission of planet-warming greenhouse gases. AI has an environmental problem. Here’s what the world can do about that.
Here’s a reminder that 2024 was the hottest year on record with WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo commenting:
“Climate history is playing out before our eyes. We’ve had not just one or two record-breaking years, but a full ten-year series.:
Whilst AI can help the environment by analysing data and predicting trends the data centres required to house the technology relies on a” staggering amount of grist: making a 2 kg computer requires 800 kg of raw materials. As well, the microchips that power AI need rare earth elements, which are often mined in environmentally destructive ways, noted Navigating New Horizons. “
Data centres produce electronic waste, which often contains hazardous substances, like mercury and lead.
Data centres use water during construction and, once operational, to cool electrical components. Globally, AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of 6 million, according to one estimate. That is a problem when a quarter of humanity already lacks access to clean water and sanitation.
To power their complex electronics, data centres that host AI technology need a lot of energy, which in most places worldwide still comes from the burning of fossil fuels, producing planet-warming greenhouse gases.
In 2016 Professor Stephen Hawking spoke about the benefits and challenges with the development of AI systems:
Speaking at the launch of the £10million Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) in Cambridge, Professor Hawking said the rise of AI would transform every aspect of our lives and was a global event on a par with the industrial revolution
“Success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation,” said Professor Hawking. “But it could also be the last – unless we learn how to avoid the risks. Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers like powerful autonomous weapons or new ways for the few to oppress the many.
“We cannot predict what we might achieve when our own minds are amplified by AI. Perhaps with the tools of this new technological revolution, we will be able to undo some of the damage done to the natural world by the last one – industrialisation.”
Fiona Grahame
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