My feature in The Skeptic (24 August 2026) on the joules, litres and silicon behind artificial intelligence: 415 TWh in 2024, 945 TWh projected for 2030, and…
An original feature written for The Skeptic: the two dominant registers on artificial intelligence, wonder and doom, share one property, neither can be falsified. A third register, arithmetic, can. Joules, litres and silicon: 415 TWh of data-centre electricity in 2024, an IEA projection of about 945 TWh by 2030, half a litre of water for a short chatbot conversation, and a nuclear reactor restarted at Three Mile Island to feed AI capacity.