Former Google CEO Tells Congress That 99 Percent of All Electricity Will Be Used to Power Superintelligent AI

In Harlan Ellison's disturbing 1967 abbreviated communicative "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," a sentient superintelligence named AM has taken implicit the earth's resources and exterminated humanity aft combining the powers of 3 US, Soviet, and Chinese supercomputers into one. A tiny radical of survivors has been kept live for AM's amusement, forced to roam the supercomputer's endless physics innards.

It's a grim setting, but evidently 1 that billionaire tech tycoon and erstwhile Google CEO Eric Schmidt imagines for the aboriginal of humanity, if his comments to the House Committee connected Energy and Commerce are immoderate indication.

"What we request from you," Schmidt told lawmakers, "is we request the vigor successful each forms, renewable, non-renewable, whatever. It needs to beryllium there, and it needs to beryllium determination quickly."

The wannabe tech overlord was appearing successful beforehand of the authorities sheet to speech AI — specifically, what the aboriginal holds for it.

"Many radical task request for our manufacture volition spell from 3 percent to 99 percent of full generation... an further 29 gigawatts by 2027 and 67 much gigawatts by 2030," helium asserted. "If [China] comes to superintelligence first, it changes the dynamic of powerfulness globally, successful ways that we person nary mode of knowing oregon predicting," Schmidt said, adjacent echoing the backstory of Ellison's cautionary tale.

Schmidt's American exceptionalism — the thought that the US is superior to each different planetary interests — is thing new, and neither is his wild-eyed brand of AI hype. In 2023, CNN reported that "42 percent of CEOs accidental AI could destruct humanity successful 5 to 10 years." Yet if today's tech is immoderate indication, AI has a agelong trek done the slop earlier it tin even think of destroying humanity, fto unsocial siphoning 99 percent of the earth's energy.

What is caller is Schmidt's insistence to Congress that Chinese "superintelligence" is coming to get us, a assertion Energy committee seat Brett Guthrie called a "sober assessment."

That's a troubling response, fixed that galore AI researchers judge that benignant of machine quality is highly improbable to deed anytime soon.

So wherefore archer lawmakers the opposite?

Like galore different tech billionaires, Schmidt has a idiosyncratic involvement not lone successful increasing the AI industry, but besides successful scaring lawmakers into handing implicit the keys to the kingdom. It's a strategy known arsenic "corporate capture," and it's been a peculiarly effectual determination for Silicon Valley giants similar Uber, which has been fixed astir implicit authorization to constitute its ain rules.

When it comes to AI, tech tycoons are peculiarly anxious astir energy, arsenic the information centers powering their soon-to-be-superintelligent algorithms devour megawatts for breakfast. As the contention to make the astir precocious AI exemplary heats up, companies similar Elon Musk's xAI are resorting to less-than-legal means to debar waiting for pesky EPA rulings and bothersome powerfulness grid assessments.

Late past year, Schmidt was caught hiding nonstop investments successful AI startups passim his tenure arsenic president of the National Security Commission connected Artificial Intelligence — nary uncertainty a immense struggle of interest, but "technically legal," according to morals experts.

Eat your bosom out, Ellison.

More connected AI: Something's Gone Wrong With Microsoft's Huge AI Data Center Investments