People like horses – not for work, but only for play? Will this increase energy consumption?

Is the end of human labour coming? Will we, like horses, be needed only for sports, fun, and recreation? This is not my comparison but an overheard one—unfortunately, I don’t know the author—but I find it extremely apt, especially considering the development of artificial intelligence.

Imagine the second half of the 19th century in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) takes her favourite horseback rides every day – she is one of the best voltaires in Europe. At parades, regiments of cavalrymen, cuirassiers and lancers proudly present themselves. In front of the Vienna Opera House, horse-drawn carriages await visitors. There is already a railroad, but it is reserved for the elite, and the horse still does most transportation. Horses are also irreplaceable in agriculture and industry. From ancient times until the end of the 19th century, there were an average of ten people per horse, and in some places, even fewer. The human world relied on the work of horses.

Over time, even the problems associated with horses were analyzed. In Paris, it was predicted that the rapid increase in horse-drawn carriages would lead to massive pollution of the streets with horse manure. If one told someone that horses would cease to be necessary in a while, it would be considered crazy. After all, without horses, the economy, transportation and military would collapse. Meanwhile, before long, machines, the internal combustion engine, and automobiles began to displace horses.

Machines dominated transportation – first railroads and then aviation – and pushed horses out of industry and agriculture. The military said goodbye to horses with nostalgia, but irrevocably. In the second half of the 20th century, there were 100-150 people per horse, and their numbers continued declining. Horses remained only for sports, recreation and fun, and life “without horses” became utterly ordinary. 

Today, we stand at a similar point in history. The difference is that the changes are happening much faster – they will be counted in decades, not centuries – and this time, it is not horses but people who are being eliminated from the labour market and the economy. The dynamic development of artificial intelligence is already a fact, and its pace is staggering. Just look at the capabilities of the o1-preview model compared to GPT-4 in the popular ChatGPT – in just one year, there has been progress by one order of magnitude. A year from now, we can expect similar dynamics.

Machines, this time electronic ones, are just now reaching the level of reasoning, inference and analysis of information typical of humans – while having better access to data – and can replace us. Notably, 90% of office work does not require artistic genius on the scale of Leonardo da Vinci. Instead, it’s routine, non-creative work that involves following procedures. Public administration, translation, basic consulting (e.g., information retrieval), text and financial statement analysis, risk assessment of companies and their markets, performance reporting, employee pre-selection (HR), employee tracking, marketing, social media activities, journalistic articles, basic IT tasks (e.g., testing) or the teaching process (lectures, tests) – all of these can be done better by artificial intelligence than we can. Just as machines once replaced horse muscle power, AI can now successfully take over many mental tasks.

We need to realistically consider a scenario in which most of the current “office class” loses their jobs, and people are forced to look for new income opportunities in areas related to entertainment, sports and recreation. Only 10-30% of true artists may remain in the future, while electronic minds will replace the rest. Our labour market share will decline at an alarming rate – just as horses once gradually disappeared from everyday life.

The outcome of this revolution remains unknown. Social and political relations will have to undergo radical transformations. Something must be done about the millions of “mental craftsmen” whose work is becoming uncompetitive with machines that never tire. Of course, lawyers, politicians and union activists will protest and try to create artificial barriers and restrictions, just as the carriage industry once tried to block the introduction of cars to the market. But the direction of change is clear. In the economy, the winner will be whoever is faster, better and…. cheaper.

People, like horses, will have to find their way in the new realities. Many will be forced to target entertainment-related industries and generate new jobs there. Widespread access to medicinal marijuana may alleviate much of the social unrest.

Is there any hope in this scenario? Yes – at least for the energy sector. The development of artificial intelligence will generate a massive energy demand. Millions, perhaps even billions, of NVIDIA cards running in giant server rooms, which will become the heart and brain of AI models, will be running continuously. It is estimated that generating a single image by artificial intelligence consumes as much energy as charging a phone. And what if billions of queries, function analysis, image generation and results are executed every moment? This process, much faster than the development of electromobility, will drive energy demand.

The future will likely be a life spent at home, where we won’t have to travel or commute, and our interaction with the rest of the world will be limited to contact with AI. Horses have disappeared from the job market, which will soon be the case for humans. However, we can expect a growing demand for megawatt-hours in the energy sector.

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