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Last month, the corporate behemoth that is Amazon celebrated its 20th birthday in Ireland. It should have been a joyous moment. After all Amazon, like other tech giants, has invested heavily in the country over the past two decades, partly due to its low tax regime, supporting heady growth.
上个月，作为企业巨头的亚马逊(Amazon)在爱尔兰庆祝了其20岁生日。这本应该是一个喜庆的时刻。毕竟，亚马逊和其他科技巨头一样，在过去二十年里在该国大举投资，部分原因是由于其低税收制度，支持了快速增长。
But in reality these birthday celebrations had a sour tinge. One reason is that European courts ruled last month that €13bn of tax breaks given to Apple were unlawful. On a recent visit, I was told that local business leaders fear this could undermine future investment.
但实际上，这些生日庆祝活动带有一丝酸涩。一个原因是欧洲法院上个月裁定给予苹果(Apple)的130亿欧元税收优惠是非法的。在最近的一次访问中，我被告知当地的商业领袖担心这可能会削弱未来的投资。
Another, more immediate, spoiler is energy. Amazon Web Services is currently rolling out €30bn of investments in Europe amid a boom in artificial intelligence, according to Neil Morris, its Irish head. But none of that bonanza is going to Ireland, because Amazon officials worry about future energy constraints. Indeed, there are reports that the company has already been rerouting some cloud activity because of this.
另一个更为紧迫的问题是能源。根据亚马逊网络服务(Amazon Web Services， AWS)爱尔兰负责人尼尔•莫里斯(Neil Morris)的说法，亚马逊网络服务正在欧洲投资300亿欧元，以应对人工智能的繁荣。但是，由于亚马逊官员担心未来的能源限制，这些投资并没有流向爱尔兰。事实上，有报道称，由于这个原因，该公司已经开始重新调整一些云活动的路线。
And while the Irish government has pledged to expand the grid, mostly via wind farms, this is not happening fast enough to meet demand. The water infrastructure is creaking too. Yes, you read that right: an (in)famously wet and windy country is struggling to sustain tech with water and wind power.
尽管爱尔兰政府承诺通过风力发电场扩大电网，但这并不足以满足需求的增长速度。水务基础设施也在吱吱作响。是的，你没看错：一个以潮湿和多风而闻名的国家难以用水力和风力维持科技发展。
There are at least four sobering lessons here. First, this saga shows that our popular discourse around tech innovation is, at best, limited and, at worst, delusional. More specifically, in modern culture we tend to talk about the internet and AI as if it they were a purely disembodied thing (like a “cloud”).
这里至少有四个发人深省的教训。首先，这个传奇故事表明，我们围绕科技创新的流行言论，往好里说是有限的，往坏里说是妄想的。更具体地说，在现代文化中，我们倾向于将互联网和人工智能视为一种纯粹无形的东西（如“云”）。
As a consequence, politicians and voters often overlook the unglamorous physical infrastructure that makes this “thing” work, such as data centres, power lines and undersea cables. But this oft-ignored hardware is essential to the operation of our modern digital economy, and we urgently need to pay it more respect and attention.
因此，政治家和选民经常忽视使其运作的不起眼的物理基础设施，如数据中心、电力线路和海底电缆。但这些经常被忽视的硬件对于我们现代数字经济的运作至关重要，我们迫切需要给予更多的尊重和关注。
Second, we need to realise this infrastructure is also increasingly under strain. In recent years the energy consumption of data centres has been fairly stable, because rising levels of internet usage were offset by rising energy efficiency. However, this is now changing fast: AI queries use around 10 times more energy than existing search engines. Thus the electricity consumption of data centres will at least double by 2026, according to the International Energy Agency — and in the US they are expected to consume nine per cent of all electricity by 2030. In Ireland the usage has already exploded to over a fifth of the grid — more than households.
其次，我们需要意识到这些基础设施也越来越紧张。近年来，数据中心的能源消耗一直相当稳定，因为互联网使用水平的提高被能源效率的提高所抵消。然而，这种情况正在迅速改变：人工智能查询的能耗大约是现有搜索引擎的10倍。因此，根据国际能源机构(International Energy Agency)的数据，到2026年，数据中心的用电量将至少翻一番，到2030年，美国的数据中心预计将消耗所有电力的9%。在爱尔兰，数据中心的用电量已经激增到电网的五分之一以上，超过了家庭用电量。
Third, the scramble by companies and governments to work out how — or if — they can find this additional electricity has produced one unexpected blessing: tech has become a key driver of the energy transition.
第三，企业和政府争相研究如何——或者是否——能够找到这些额外的电力，这带来了一个意想不到的好处：科技已成为能源转型的关键驱动力。
Yes, surging electricity usage is raising emissions. But companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple are investing heavily in hydro, wind and solar power and battery innovation. Microsoft even recently announced a deal with the Constellation utility group to invest $1.6bn to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania to meet AI electricity demand. Constellation’s market capitalisation has since jumped above $80bn because investors expect more such deals.
是的，不断增长的用电量正在增加排放量。但是像谷歌(Google)、微软(Microsoft)和苹果这样的公司正在大力投资于水力、风力和太阳能发电以及电池创新。微软甚至最近宣布与Constellation公用事业集团达成协议，投资16亿美元重新启动宾夕法尼亚的三里岛(Three Mile Island)核电站，以满足人工智能的用电需求。由于投资者预期会有更多类似的交易，Constellation的市值已经超过800亿美元。
Meanwhile OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates are extolling the joys of small modular reactors. They and others in the tech sector hope that such moves will eventually reduce the energy squeeze, particularly if future versions of AI use less energy. If so, current fears about electricity supply might turn out to be misguided — just as predictions of a global famine were upended by the 1960s’ green revolution. Tech itself can solve tech woes — or so they hope.
与此同时，OpenAI的萨姆•奥尔特曼(Sam Altman)和微软联合创始人比尔•盖茨(Bill Gates)正在赞扬小型模块化反应堆的优点。他们和科技行业的其他人希望这些举措最终能够缓解能源紧缺问题，特别是如果未来版本的人工智能能够使用更少的能源。如果是这样的话，目前对电力供应的担忧可能会被证明是多虑的，就像上世纪60年代的绿色革命颠覆了全球饥荒的预测一样。科技本身可以解决科技难题——至少他们是这样希望的。
However, the fourth lesson is that such an innovative energy solution couldn’t work without joined-up government policy. Sadly, that is in short supply. After all, you need planning permission to build data centres, which often means government intervention. Just look at how Angela Rayner, the UK deputy prime minister, is wading into a local fight in Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire, where locals want to block new digital investment.
然而，第四个教训是，这样一种创新的能源解决方案在没有协调一致的政府政策的情况下是行不通的。可悲的是，这种政策供给不足。毕竟，建设数据中心需要规划许可，这往往意味着政府干预。看看英国副首相安吉拉•雷纳(Angela Rayner)如何介入赫特福德郡阿伯茨兰利的一场地方争斗，当地居民希望阻止新的数字投资。
You also need government involvement to create connected electricity grids. One huge impediment to the rollout of renewable energy in the US, for example, is that it is scandalously hard to get the permits needed to build transmission lines to connect renewable energy resources in the American heartlands to power-hungry places such as California.
建立互联电网也需要政府的参与。例如，在美国推广可再生能源的一个巨大障碍是，很难获得建设输电线路所需的许可证，而这些线路可将美国中部的可再生能源资源与加利福尼亚等电力需求旺盛的地方连接起来。
And if the energy squeeze intensifies, we will also need government to adjudicate the future distribution of scarce electricity resources and to tackle questions such as whether households ought to get priority over business if the grid crumbles, and whether the state or Big Tech should fund innovation.
如果能源紧缩加剧，我们还需要政府来裁决未来稀缺电力资源的分配，并解决一些问题，例如在电网崩溃时，家庭是否应优先于企业获得电力，以及国家或大型科技公司(Big Tech)是否应资助创新。
Libertarians — and many techies — might argue that market forces (ie prices) should determine the answers. But that vision is politically toxic, as Irish leaders know only too well. So brace yourself for energy battles across the industrialised world. It is not just AI’s existential future risks that we should worry about now.
自由主义者和许多技术人员可能会认为，市场力量（即价格）应该决定答案。但正如爱尔兰领导人所深知的那样，这种愿景在政治上是有害的。因此，请做好准备，迎接工业化世界的能源之争。我们现在应该担心的不仅仅是人工智能未来的生存风险。