Artificial Intelligence started off as a handy search engine that summarized information compiled from various websites. It advanced to such uses as automatic inventory control for stores and preparing financial statements. Then came essay-writing and providing mathematical solutions for students — much to the frustration of teachers.
Now, AI has morphed from helpful tool to must-have technology. This year, the big five hyper-scalers — Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle — will together shell out more than US$750 billion in AI expenditures. Microsoft has just spent more than US$100 billion on its partnership with OpenAI. And along comes Mythos AI: a super-powerful "autonomous thinking" model that can identify vulnerabilities in almost any system, including banking, electricity grids and air traffic control. In the wrong hands, it could facilitate horrendous cyber-attacks. And those wrong "hands" might be Mythos itself. In one test, its AI model managed to "escape," gaining access to the internet and control of several critical systems.
This scary prospect is not far off the plot of suspense novelist Nelson DeMille's recent, posthumously published thriller, "The Tin Men," in which, at a remote U.S. Army AI research post in the Mojave Desert, AI-controlled bots gone rogue murder their human masters. Someone needs to make sure Mythos' AI teams all get copies.
A big problem facing AI is how to generate the enormous amounts of electricity required to power data centres. An International Energy Agency report estimates global electricity demand will more than double between now and 2030. So far the U.S. and China are home to the most AI data centres. China's coal-fired power runs 30 per cent of them — and generates lots of environment-damaging emissions doing so. The U.S. supplies almost all the rest, powering them mainly with clean-burning natural gas and emissions-free nuclear power.
Europe needs to build data centres to remain AI-competitive, but the EU has struggled just to meet existing electricity demand after Russia cut natural gas supplies in half, forcing resort to costlier LNG imports. That makes meeting electricity demand for AI even more challenging and expensive. Moreover, Europe's power grid is the world's oldest at an average age of 50 years. Analysts estimate the EU would need to spend US$1 trillion it doesn't have to prepare its power grid for AI.
Alberta's enormous natural gas resources and huge land base make her a very attractive place to locate data centres. Six are currently planned, the largest being the enormous Wonder Valley Project in Grand Prairie's Greenway Industrial Park. Powered by natural gas and geothermal, it will consist of 58 buildings spread across 1,200 acres and cost US$70 billion.
These and other massive projects are being met with a combination of consternation and resistance by those living nearby. But data centres are the new reality and a major economic boost for a province whose natural gas export pipeline projects are all too often caught up in a multi-jurisdictional regulatory morass.
AI is transforming the future throughout the developed world. To a retired engineer, it's all very fascinating but not especially impactful. But what about the generation just beginning their careers? Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt recently told University of Arizona graduates that AI "will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have" — and got booed for it.
Although there has never been a more tech-savvy generation, even in these early days on AI dominance graduates are either having trouble getting a job or seeing friends losing theirs. A Statistics Canada analysis found that three in five workers are in occupations with high exposure to AI. In April, Meta laid off 8,000 employees. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle have yet to announce their layoff tolls but you can be sure they're coming.
Ironically, computer science students are among the most AI-exposed of all, as human software programming heads toward obsolescence. Economists refer to such fundamental changes, euphemistically, as "disruptive events." AI is likely the biggest disruptive event in generations. With many of the most common career choices disappearing, what's left for the current generation of job-seekers?
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The answer: jobs that require, not virtual, but physical presence. Fortunately, there's a long list: health-care professionals (including doctors, nurses, radiologists, dentists, pharmacists, lab technicians), veterinarians, architects, engineers, accountants and many more.
One area where there is already a major shortage is skilled trades, the people you call when you need something built or fixed, including electricians, plumbers, carpenters, welders and auto mechanics. Becoming a tradesperson means putting down your "device" and working with the knowledge in your head and the skills in your hands, dealing with real people doing real things. It's actually much more fulfilling and motivating. With AI doing almost everything else, that's the real future.
Gwyn Morgan, a retired business leader, has been a director of five global corporations.