The Algonquian people spoke of the wendigo: a beast that poisoned people’s minds to aid its insatiable gluttony for human flesh and souls.
While the Beehive worries about minutae, it is the Tech Bros of Big Tech who present the greatest existential threat to democracy and society.
Like the wendigo of old but conceived in the darkest depths of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, Amazon, Meta, Palantir and X owned by Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel and Musk, foster worldwide acquiescence to feed their insatiable appetite for resources to concentrate more wealth and power in their hands.
Trump is the means to an end; the Tech Bros donated $US394.1 million ($NZ653m) to his 2024 campaign and the President is now a pliable friend. The failed bromance that begat DOGE wasn’t about promised government efficiency. This mirage has dismantled vital programmes and undermined democratic institutions.
The lauded "Big, Beautiful" spending Bill will limit state-level regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) for a decade.
Tech Bros despise regulation and are disdainful of democracy. Society feels their destructive whirlwind as the $US300 billion bet on generative AI remains unregulated.
Having relied on massive US government subsidy to grow their businesses (in Musk’s case $US38b by 2025, while Thiel landed $US20b between 2016 and 2019 for supporting Trump’s first presidential campaign), they now want government to bail out failing AI.
Why? In 2024, Darren Acemoglu of MIT and Jim Covello of Goldman Sachs registered their scepticism of AI’s economic benefits, while neural scientist and serial AI entrepreneur Gary Marcus views the technology as "driven by hype", predicting the "likely financial collapse of generative AI".
Apple recently underlined the fundamental limitations of generative AI. The cash-strapped UK government has allocated £47b ($NZ106b) so, as a minister pungently stated, AI could be "mainlined into the veins" of the nation. Meanwhile, the growing chorus of concern about AI threatening society and democracy are dismissed as Luddite hysteria.
The energy implications are also striking. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates by 2030 AI will consume more energy than Japan and US industry combined.
Yet governments acquiesce. According to investigative journalists Democracy for Sale, Big Tech has shaped the British government’s AI strategy despite these implications while AI-related energy consumption will quadruple in the UK by 2030.
National electricity grids already struggle to cope with demand from AI data centres. In Ireland these centres consume 21% of electrical output and nearly caused several grid blackouts last year that led to a four-year moratorium on new data centres.
Internationally, AI is placing national grids under strain, crowding out domestic and industrial customers as their needs increase. In New Zealand, Cyclone Gabriel demonstrated we have a delicate energy balance; with ageing, vulnerable electrical infrastructure and lacking government commitments to offshore wind and mass solar, there is a real risk that with AI data centres, like Microsoft’s and Amazon’s in Auckland, our already troubled grid could reach a tipping point.
This is not a local issue; there is a genuine global risk of rolling outages as countries scramble to integrate Big Tech into hybridised energy solutions with unpredictable variability in ageing grid networks struggling with unprecedented demand.
The environmental consequences are also troubling. Four Big Tech beasts’ AI-technology increased carbon emissions by 135% and 182% over 2020 and 2023, and the IEA predicts that 40% of the increase in AI’s global energy consumption (1250TWh by 2035) will come from coal and gas.
Musk’s xAI supercomputer in Memphis, powered by 35 methane gas turbines, is choking local neighbourhoods. Globally, many countries are struggling to connect new renewable energy sources, causing significant variance between supply and demand.
The AI wendigo craves energy resources to sate its appetite.
AI is not our saviour because what exactly needs to be saved? Like the Wise Men of Chelm, the Tech Bros create "problems" to which they claim to have an instant "solution".
We cannot dismiss AI but it is a limited tool, not our master.
Through hype and unlimited expenditure subverting governments, Tech Bros present a threat to democracy and society. As we abdicate our intellects and responsibilities to unconscious machines, fossil fuels feed the wendigo of generative AI.
Unregulated, AI is a major existential threat. The wendigo become leviathan, devouring souls marching willingly, not towards a golden age of peace and prosperity, but a future of Orwell’s and Huxley’s darkest nightmares.
— Andrew Perchard is an honorary research professor, University of Otago, and a former head of energy supply policy at the Scottish government; John Holt has worked in heavy industry and infrastructure and has been a senior occupational health and safety professional in Australia and the UK for over 20 years; Duncan Connors is a freelance writer, consultant and has worked in energy and infrastructure policy.
