Saving the world from robots
Nobody told me the robot revolution would be this smoggy. To save ourselves from the robots, the same massive tech companies that are making them have a solution: go to space. Data centers need round the clock power, which solar can’t do because of, you know, night (though batteries are helping make up the difference). So why not simply put giant mirrors into space to reflect sunlight at all times?
This plan (which sounds more like a supervillain’s plot to melt the ice caps) is now an actual plan from Meta. If that’s not sci-fi enough, Google proposed creating a formation-flying fleet of AI data centers into orbit; not to be outdone, as usual, SpaceX then filed for permission to put 1 million such satellites into orbit. As these companies point out, at least in space, you get constant solar power, and you don’t produce any emissions on Earth.
If space doesn’t work out, tech companies might just use nukes. Many of them are signing agreements with nuclear power startups. Nuclear power sources have the ability to run 24/7 and don’t produce any CO2, which is good. It’s also enormously radioactive, which is bad, and why so few nuclear plants have been built in the last few decades. These startups are promising that their new, much smaller reactors will be safe and more readily able to adapt to changing energy needs. Let’s hope, for the sake of the “go fast, break stuff” tech industry, and for the sake of our air-breathing lungs, that they’re right.
