We all have to admit that artificial intelligence (AI) is impressive: an AI intelligence can beat world champion chess players now with predictable regularity. It can intelligently (usually) answer questions that would be posed to a college student in a math, science or history homework exercise, prompting the student to conclude that the AI resource knows all the “right” answers, and that human intelligence is just needed as a sort of backstop to catch it when it occasionally goes astray. AI is machine operation that goes beyond massive storage of data and data retrieval. We ask here whether AI truly holds a promise of improving our lives for the benefit of all, and also whether it will be used, as so many other tools have been over the millennia, to interfere with our basic human rights. Health freedom involves the ability to follow the journey that we choose with regard to our health. How will these AI data centers affect our health freedoms?  

The increasing usage of AI everywhere serves to increase its acceptance

 AI is everywhere now, and it has already inserted itself into our lives, without the public requesting it. Yahoo email, for example, now summarizes every email with AI so that you don’t have to read the whole email, even when you have not asked for this use. Little popup windows open online, luring you in to try out AI. We are told we need it for any number of uses, from our doctors who need it as super-powerful diagnostic tools, to better GPS, and for our military to protect us from cyber-attacks. But what is little discussed is how AI could affect our well-being.

Energy requirements are massive and proposed solutions raise new questions

 What about the energy needed for AI?  Data centers are sprouting up and many more are planned. An AI-centered economy is portrayed as “the promised land,” but in order to reach that promised land we have to build massive data centers in many parts of the country so as to collect the massive amount of data—published science, news reports, personal communications, and other data that is constantly being generated. The electricity required for operating such data centers is enormous and until new power plants are built, rolling blackouts are predicted for parts of the population. What happens when the populations are told they need to limit air conditioning on a hot day while energy is routed to cool the AI center?

Currently, a regular data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 houses. But the new data centers will use 20 times as much, an equivalent to adding 2 million homes to the grid. One of the plans is to build nuclear power plants to keep up with the energy needs of the new data centers. The United States in the past decades has backed away from nuclear energy, as issues with storage, disposal, and the hazards of radioactive waste have not been solved. The disaster at Fukushima in 2011 showed the world how just one nuclear power plant leaking could contaminate the ocean and the area around the plant. The plant at Fukushima is still being monitored and is still releasing radioactive material today. What new technology is there to contain nuclear waste and protect nuclear power plants from meltdowns?  In whose backyard will the massive amounts of nuclear waste be stored since we still have not solved the problem of safe long-term nuclear waste storage?