The Promise and Peril of AI

Until the 19th century, invention was considered virtuous. The inventors took pleasure in the invention and gifted it as a service to humanity. The thermometer, Galileo’s telescope, Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, Einstein's theory of gravity and special relativity, the photoelectric effect, Newcomen’s steam engine, Benjamin Franklin’s electricity, and Graham Bell’s telephone were all inventions that helped humanity grow prosperous.

Humankind learned to harness the inventions' full potential and advance civilization across the world. Science began to grow faster and sharper, at a pace that human civilization perhaps hadn't envisioned. Transistors in the 60s and Moore's law eventually drove the world to transfer human memory into machines for storage and computation.

From using six to eight transistors in radios to more than 10,000 in IBM computers in 1959, current civilization confounds us with the fact that billions of transistors are used in a tiny microprocessor in the age of the internet and, in the reign of AI, drive a revolution in information technology.

Over the last two decades, from the craze for Facebook, Instagram, and MacBook to Apple, we've been drawn toward an undefined destination and a hazy model of development, driven by the rise of AI, AGI, and superintelligence. 

New names like ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini, and DeepMind emerge from mega-structured data centers in every mind and every nook and corner of the world. The question pops: Is humanity best served by these in its best interests at all, or will their flames eventually burn the current civilization?

The world is glued to the ideas of OpenAI, Nvidia, Meta, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, SpaceX, et al and hypnotized by the technological prophecies of Tech Giants like Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Dario Amodei, Greg Brockman, or Ilya Sutskever; the names are bigger than their inventions.

The clamor of the promises is louder than the human ear can absorb. The projected dreams of modernity aim to reach heights never achieved in human history to solve humanity's problems or advance civilization. There is an all-out echo of a hungry world of data and algorithms set to solve all problems of human life.

Since the inception of AI, and now, prominently, its development and use have been propelled by these tiny elites with huge money and influence, tantalizing dreams of an extreme modernity with technology comparable to what could be forged by divine means.

The foundations owned by these tech giants would decide what is good for the world, not what the rest of the world would prefer to think. The need for massive amounts of land, energy, water, copper, and lithium drives the development of these giant technological infrastructures to advance these dreams of modernity.

Until recently, the largest data centers needed land the size of a football field, but now require large tracts of land that rival those of the largest universities or 450 football fields.

Energy needs for data centers have risen from 150-megawatt facilities to 1,000-2,000 megawatts, with an estimated requirement of 5,000-10,000 megawatts for future data center projects. Current global computing efforts are estimated to consume more energy than all of India, the world's third-largest electricity consumer.

The heat generated by this process, from data centers to the single queries made in chatbots, requires cooling that consumes 1.1 to 1.7 trillion gallons of fresh water per year. 

The insatiable appetite for land, water, and energy is preferred to be met by the Global South, except in Arizona, USA. The Colorado River in Arizona has not only caused drought but has also created a serious shortage of fresh water, dangerously low in Arizona and in the six neighboring states.

In recent times, during Hurricanes Irma in Florida and Harvey in Texas, millions of people lost power, hospitals evacuated patients, and hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed, but data centers in those areas didn’t experience system disruptions. 

There was a recent protest on an island in Indonesia over a lack of drinking water caused by excessive water use by data centers. The Global South is experiencing a surge in social, labor, and environmental costs.

The data inputs for these massive missions conducted in the poorest parts of Kenya, Nepal, Venezuela, or Pakistan were paid no more than $2 per hour per individual, while the tech giants have made billions in profit.

Cheap land, generous tax breaks, easy access to water in the Global South, and liberal export policies support product extraction at the expense of the poor countries that host data centers for the service of AI.

Should AI still be called the harbinger of the fourth Industrial Revolution? Should AGI, if ever achieved, solve climate change, enable health care, and provide equitable education?

Blind faith in tech giants, with the promise of insurmountable benefits for the world, suggests otherwise, while Sam Altman's sister suffers immeasurable poverty to live a decent life in health and housing. 

Should the world surrender to the illusory ideas of these Jesus-like tech giants that the algorithms will know better than human beings to run the world? Should we surrender human intelligence to machine-driven superintelligence? Should consciousness be subjugated by intelligence for technological development, with little regard for human civilization?

Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom argues in his book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, that should the AI ever become smarter than humans, it could be difficult to control and could cause an existential catastrophe. Let's not forget Bill Gates's warning about the unregulated development of AI.

For Bangladesh, when a bunch of tech guys return home to join the current dispensation's journey and dare to declare that they will turn Bangladesh into a future semiconductor hub, there are genuine worries. Of the four basics these industries need, Bangladesh has in abundance water. 

It has already been sufficiently contaminated by the apparel industry's growth over more than forty years. Research suggested that the water treatment plant would require extracting a few meters of soil beneath the Buriganga River to purify the water for future use.

Should the semiconductor venture in Bangladesh take place for cooling purposes due to its abundant water, the next generation in 25 years will find themselves in the same plight as Chile or states around the Colorado River sooner rather than later.

The economic growth it may bring in will go to the account of the tech giants, while tiny tech guys in Bangladesh will benefit largely at the expense of huge destruction to our sweet water with a minimal generation of employment, the goal of the government.

The AI promise lies in the extent to which the future of the economy, society, and politics will be shaped by attempts to overcome death through these technological advancements. The promises are exaggerated, oblivious to the fact that history has failed us in overcoming inequality through communist ideas. 

No one knows what the job market will look like after a quarter of a century, what the ecology will look like in the same time to sustain human beings on the planet, or which religions, economic systems, and political structures will survive in the world.

Let the world be conscious enough not to surrender to the promise of AI, put its hands off it, and ignorantly welcome greater peril to future generations.

Brigadier General AF Jaglul Ahmed (Retd) is a regular contributor to national dailies. He can be reached at [email protected].