Clean Energy + AI = Our Abundant Future (New Must-Read)

Hey there,

It's a big week in energy, growth and center-left thinking because of the release of the new book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. If you don't know them, they're two of the preeminent columnists and podcasters at The New York Times and The Atlantic.

One of the central ideas of the book is that cheap, clean energy is the linchpin of our future growth and success as a society.

This is especially true in the realm of AI.

Think about it – if we unlocked more cheap, clean electricity, it would not only make AI development and usage much cheaper but also would alleviate many of the environmental concerns about giant new datacenters. We wouldn't care how cheaply a model was trained because electricity costs would be negligible either way.

We are already seeing the growth of solar in the Southwest US, and cranking that up in combination with cheaper wind energy, safe nuclear energy (like in France) and clean geothermal energy (like in Iceland) could basically allow us to stop using dirty sources like coal and gas and bring electricity prices way down.

Klein and Thompson are excellent messengers for this, and I recommend grabbing Abundance when you have time. But it's also valuable to look back at some of their (less-best-selling) predecessors, like One Billion Americans and Fully Automated Luxury Communism. (You can see by those somewhat alarming titles why maybe they are not the mainstream hits that Abundance is. 🙂) There's also an interesting pre-ChatGPT chapter about AI in Falter, a book by pioneer environmentalist Bill McKibben, which seemed weird when I read it in 2019 but prescient today.

These books make a similar case for more invention, more pro-social development, and more new life-improving tech. And, in my view, the breakthroughs in AI that have happened in the past few years (after those older books were written) validate all these ideas.

In some ways, it's cool that rather than just saying "let's clean up our energy usage to save the planet" – which is valid but not always something the average voter is on board with – we can say "let's build clean and cheap energy so everyone can have their own C-3PO."

I think that's a pretty good deal.

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Over in the Innovating with AI students-only community, we're cooking up new stuff about high-end/enterprise client sales (for consultants) and building AI Executive Assistants with no- or low-code.

We'll also be releasing our new public AI Consultants Directory in the next month. If you are looking for help on an AI project, this is going to be your one-stop shop to connect with consultants trained via our program. (Got a project request you want to share with them now? Email me!)

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That's all for today!

As always, if you have any questions or topic ideas, just reply.

Have a great day,

– Rob Howard
Founder of Innovating with AI