Artificial Intelligence may feel virtual, but it has a very real ecological footprint, especially in terms of the amount of electricity required to run the servers and water required to cool them!
And the rest....
AI as it stands depends on ever increasing amounts of server-infrastructure, but data centers and also run up against planning objections, and may meet broader, more national level political objections.
Not every community wants a giant, power-guzzling server farm next door, especially if the local grid’s already stretched thin. So the real choke point isn’t just in the tech—it’s in physics, power, and politics.
Data Centres in Space...?
This has been mooted, but when Starlinks' service already has waiting lists in some cities because their data capacity has been reached, this would seem to suggest that there simply isn't the capacity to bean data from space in the quantity it would be required for AI!
I just don't think there's enough space up there for all the satellites that would be required for such a massive infrastructure...
Chasing growth, ignoring limits
I think we just need to maybe stop for a minute and ask what should we be using AI for....? Is it worth the cost to get convenience?