Issue 92 — Nuclear-Powered AI

3 min readOct 22, 2024

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A moment for station identification for new readers and listeners: 500 Words is a weekly-ish newsletter with two regular columns: INTERROGATING AI, which examines our use of artificial intelligence, and BLURBOMATIC, a monthly curated list of book reviews. I’ll also keep you updated about books I’m publishing, productions in progress, new courses and trainings, and podcasts I’m launching or publicizing.

INTERROGATING AI

I have made a point of writing about productive uses for AI, like using a chatbot as a writing coach to help you come up with ideas. Adobe has added a feature to their editing app, Premiere Pro, that will generate a few missing frames of video if yours ends too early to make the edit. AI has the capability of making us fitter, happier, more productive (Yes, a that’s a Radiohead quote from Ok Computer.)

But truly interrogating AI means asking who it benefits. Easy answer to that: The companies leading AI development have a beneficiary in mind–themselves. AI has corporate masters, and it is being shaped to benefit them. We, as users of AI, can speak up and make it more beneficial to humans, and we ask demand that it not hurt the Earth too much.

For example:

AI’s require big ass computers (sorry, technical language) and those machines require electricity and water. (Electricity, because they’re computers. And water for cooling the servers on the server farms.) To address this environmental impact, AI companies must make AI more energy efficient. AI should not turn into a planet-killer like, say, cars. But Microsoft and Amazon aren’t worried about planet killing. They want to make AI nuclear-powered.

Wait, wut?

Microsoft has signed agreements to power AI from nuclear plants. They plan to buy electricity from the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor. Funny, that name sounds familiar. Um, [checks notes] wasn’t Three Mile Island the site of most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history? Well, okay, then, Microsoft must be guessing they won’t make the same mistake twice! Right!?

Microsoft doesn’t care about the optics. They just want the AI the way they want it. Amazon is also investing in nuclear power to generate electricity for its AI efforts. Google is going nuclear also. Like Amazon, it’s investing in smaller, modular nuclear reactors. You think they would have asked a chatbot to fill them in whether safely disposing of nuclear waste is still kind of a problem.

Going nuclear as a “solution” sidesteps the real issue of AI energy demand. Some estimates suggest that ChatGPT in daily use could equal the energy consumption of about 33,000 U.S. households. Using an AI chatbot can require ten times the electricity than a standard Google search uses.

Whatever? Look yourself in the mirror and ask if you really want to inflict harm on our planet just to get Zoom to summarize your meeting. Corporations riding the AI boom see the benefits for themselves. They’re thinking of their future, not ours.

BLURBOMATIC

This month in Blurbomatic, I’m recommending a young audiences novel called Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn. Her book puts its complex characters into a framework of legend and magic, reinventing the genre of “King Arthur” stories. It’s a page-turner with some great twists.

Writing for Reader’s Favorite, Christian Sia reviewed my novel Resist with praise like this: “The writing is gorgeous, the setting is vividly drawn, and the characters are robust. This is an enjoyable read.” Buy Resist on Amazon, B&N or Ingram Spark for the best price.

THE FUTURE LAB PODCAST

Sue Toth is a book editor and coach who specializes in romance, mystery, and thrillers. She keeps writers inspired, helps them work through writers’ block, and helps their books be born into the world.

In tthis week’s The Future Lab, Sue and I talk about the special challenges of writing climate fiction. I challenged her to tell me how her developmental editing work with thrillers applied to writing compelling climate fiction, and she delivers some wonderful insights.

Thanks for reading and listening,

Lee