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In Harlan Ellison’s disturbing 1967 short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” a sentient superintelligence named AM has taken over the earth’s resources and exterminated humanity after combining the powers of three US, Soviet, and Chinese supercomputers into one. A small group of survivors has been kept alive for AM’s amusement, forced to roam the supercomputer’s endless electronic innards.
It’s a grim setting, but evidently one that billionaire tech tycoon and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt imagines for the future of humanity, if his comments to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce are any indication.
“What we need from you,” Schmidt told lawmakers, “is we need the energy in all forms, renewable, non-renewable, whatever. It needs to be there, and it needs to be there quickly.”
The wannabe tech overlord was appearing in front of the government panel to talk AI — specifically, what the future holds for it.
“Many people project demand for our industry will go from 3 percent to 99 percent of total generation… an additional 29 gigawatts by 2027 and 67 more gigawatts by 2030,” he asserted. “If [China] comes to superintelligence first, it changes the dynamic of power globally, in ways that we have no way of understanding or predicting,” Schmidt said, even echoing the backstory of Ellison’s cautionary tale.
Schmidt’s American exceptionalism — the idea that the US is superior to all other global interests — is nothing new, and neither is his wild-eyed brand of AI hype. In 2023, CNN reported that “42 percent of CEOs say AI could destroy humanity in five to ten years.” Yet if today’s tech is any indication, AI has a long trek through the slop before it can even think of destroying humanity, let alone siphoning 99 percent of the earth’s energy.
What is new is Schmidt’s insistence to Congress that Chinese “superintelligence” is coming to get us, a claim Energy committee chair Brett Guthrie called a “sober assessment.”
That’s a troubling response, given that many AI researchers believe that type of computer intelligence is highly unlikely to hit anytime soon.
So why tell lawmakers the opposite?
Like many other tech billionaires, Schmidt has a personal interest not only in growing the AI industry, but also in scaring lawmakers into handing over the keys to the kingdom. It’s a strategy known as “corporate capture,” and it’s been a particularly effective move for Silicon Valley giants like Uber, which has been given almost complete authority to write its own rules.
When it comes to AI, tech tycoons are particularly anxious about energy, as the data centers powering their soon-to-be-superintelligent algorithms eat megawatts for breakfast. As the race to develop the most advanced AI model heats up, companies like Elon Musk’s xAI are resorting to less-than-legal means to avoid waiting for pesky EPA rulings and bothersome power grid assessments.
Late last year, Schmidt was caught hiding direct investments in AI startups throughout his tenure as chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence — no doubt a huge conflict of interest, but “technically legal,” according to ethics experts.
Eat your heart out, Ellison.
More on AI: Something’s Gone Wrong With Microsoft’s Huge AI Data Center Investments
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