Free events with Taiwan’s former digital minister Audrey Tang
Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
We are excited to be hosting Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl on their Australian trip next week and, if you are a Sydney or Canberra based supporter, we have events you can attend with us.
First, we have a Sydney public lecture where I’ll be a facilitating a discussion alongside Jess Scully at UTS, lunchtime on Tuesday August 13. You can register for that here.
And we have set aside 10 seats for our subscribers who would like to attend the National Press Club on Thursday August 15 – click here if you’d like to come as our guest.
Burning Platforms: How AI Will Really Destroy the World
With so much focus on the possible futures that whatever we describe as ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is taking us, there is a glaring silence at the material cost for taking that journey.
But wait! It’s not the killer drones or sentient machines that pose the great risk to humanity, but the humdrum processing of all the information that is being captured and repurposed in the name of ‘data insights’.
Whether it’s deploying a LLM or mining bitcoin, information technology is poised to become the most energy-intensive industry on earth.
At a time when the world is rapidly moving to change its energy base of fossil fuels to renewables in a way that keeps the lights on, this is a joker card in the broader existential fight for survival.
It really is confounding how little thought has been given to the climate implications of this next wave of the digital revolution. Although this week’s guest, Gordon Noble, the research director at UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, is doing his best to raise the issue.
Ground zero are the secretive data centres that Gordon used to visit in his days as a union organiser, grid-sucking facilities that process and store the massive troves of information that are AI’s raw material.
Here’s a few stats that should get us all thinking:
- Data centres already consume five percent of Australia’s energy; more than the aviation industry.
- Since the release of ChatGTP less than two years ago, the demand for processing is doubling every 100 days.
- The energy required to run AI tasks is already accelerating with an annual growth rate between 26 and 36 percent.
These energy-guzzling data centres also suck up huge amounts of water, contributing to pressure in drought afflicted areas like California.
UTS surveyed sustainability professionals in Australian industry which found only a tiny percentage looking at the technological developments through a climate and sustainability lens.
You can read more of Gordon’s research here:
It’s so obviously an issue, it appears to be hiding in plain sight. You can hear more of our excellent discussion with Gordon on the latest episode of Burning Platforms here.
In this week’s episode we also discuss:
- Has the US Supreme Court just granted Big Tech a giant leave pass by extending the doctrine of ‘free speech’ to algorithms?
- Why is Google still addicted to Cookies and has walked back its commitment
to walk them back. - And could Mark Zuckerberg by right, for once when it
comes to open-source AI?
What we are clicking
- A Softer Touch? As the Democrat leadership baton is handed to Kamala Harris, Parris Marx looks at concerns she may soften on the strong anti-trust record of her predecessor.
- Signing-Off. Brett Solomon has been a leading voice for digital human rights 15 years and these reflections as he stands down from his role at Access Now are well worth a read.
- ‘The Unaccountability Machine.’ I’m loving this book that chronicles the thinking of Stafford Beer, one of the pioneers of cybernetics and one-time advisor to Salvador Allende.
