Iren: A Volatile Virtue in the Age of Machines

The demand, it transpires, is for power. Not the sort of power wielded by statesmen, but the brute force required to sustain the digital leviathans. Meta Platforms, in a display of almost vulgar extravagance, proposes to consume hundreds of gigawatts to fuel its artificial intelligence projects. Microsoft, equally ambitious, speaks of an ‘industrial revolution.’ One suspects these gentlemen have not considered the implications for the national grid, or indeed, the aesthetic impact of so many server farms.






