Symposium: Big Tech, AI & Energy Futures

The surge in use of AI services has created an enormous demand for energy with Big Tech companies such as Microsoft (together with Open AI), Amazon and Google driving the demand and using their “platform power” to shape this industry. How does this development change the energy landscape, and what visions of the future are constituting these energy futures?  This symposium, organized by the SIG Greening the Digital Society and Futures SIG features researchers from Utrecht University and the Rathenau Institute discussing dilemmas at the intersection of Big Tech, AI, and energy.

Contested transition

A contradiction exists in tech discourse: companies campaign to decarbonize while figures like Sam Altman (OpenAI) claim we need “infinite energy” for progress, and others like Musk and Zuckerberg are actively supporting the climate-averse policies of the Trump-administration. 

Due to their increased energy demand, tech companies are investing in new energy projects like nuclear and geothermal energy, while continuing to rely on fossil fuels. Platform companies are expanding into the energy sector, for instance with data centers in Ireland expected to consume 25% of the country's energy by 2030.

The role of tech corporations in climate futures

This event questions how tech corporations shape climate futures. What visions for the future are emerging, and what are the material and immaterial consequences of the ways in which these futures are advertised and realized? How is the energy landscape changing globally, nationally and locally? Where is resistance developing? 

Giving changing geopolitical relations, the symposium aims to discuss the sovereignty of European’s technological and energy infrastructures and consider these in tandem with EU’s climate goals: to what extent are we narrowing the window of potential climate futures through the dependency on Big Tech, and what different futures could be imagined, and realized?

Program

For questions, contact the organizers: Abe Hendriks or Rianne Riemens.