Computer power has a minimal impact on carbon emissions as data centers are mostly powered by renewable energy sources. Initiatives like Google and Microsoft owning renewable energy wind farms contribute to sustainability. Though there are environmental concerns like the use of materials in chip manufacture, the overall carbon cost per unit of computation remains low. The argument that electricity access will restrict AI development is unfounded, given data centers' small percentage of a city's electricity consumption at the 100-megawatt scale.
This the second instalment of our three-part episode. Mustafa Suleyman is the ultimate AI insider. As co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, he is one of the pioneers of the artificial intelligence revolution, potentially the single greatest accelerant of progress in history. His new book The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma, asks questions about whether society is prepared for such rapid change. In the first of a three-part conversation for this episode of Intelligence Squared, Suleyman joined Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, live at the Tabernacle theatre in London to explain how he believes we are approaching a critical threshold in the history of humankind.
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