“When Geist reaches full self-consciousness, the alienation of individuals ceases, leading to an existence in which personal and collective identities are harmonized.” (Hegel)
The announced rapid expansion of mega data centers across the United States, fueled by generative artificial intelligence (AI) and the crypto boom, is generating skepticism and opposition. Local communities and various environmental organizations warn that the trend of AI development will sharply increase energy demand and cause one of the greatest environmental and social threats of our generation. All this adds up to a significant and worrying impact that AI is having on society, including large job losses (over 20%) and social instability.
At the same time, at the recently held second national conference on AI in Podgorica, it was announced that new development projects in Montenegro will be designed and powered by artificial intelligence.
"I hope that we will do something really big, powerful and beautiful in Montenegro. I think it will be the most advanced AI development in the world, because it will be designed using AI. It will be powered by AI. It will monitor quality of life, technology, energy, pollution, safety, childcare and all of that in accordance with state regulations and environmental standards," said Alabar.
"Electricity is the fuel for AI. A data center requires one gigawatt. We have a large hydropower potential and we must use it," said Prime Minister Spajić.
So, it is necessary to quickly build - bang, bang - three Mratinje-type hydroelectric power plants to satisfy the one GW required by the Artificial Intelligence Data Center, according to Prime Minister Spajić. So, three times more than is needed to supply the entire population of Montenegro.
I remember that during a visit to the Titograd Aluminum Plant, Tito was quite surprised when they told him how much electricity would be consumed. They told him that the construction of the Mratinje hydroelectric power plant, with a capacity of 342 MW, was planned to meet the needs of the Titograd Aluminum Plant. The construction of the Mratinje hydroelectric power plant took seven years. “For God’s sake, what’s the point of building a huge hydroelectric power plant for the needs of one factory,” Tito remarked angrily. Incidentally, to repeat, the capacity of the Mratinje hydroelectric power plant (342 MW) was enough to meet the needs of the citizens of the whole of Montenegro. Perhaps it was a consolation that in the 1980s, the Titograd Aluminum Plant employed five thousand workers, and its main supplier, the bauxite mines in Nikšić, employed an additional fourteen hundred workers. About fifty thousand tons of aluminum were produced annually. I remember this because in 1986-1987. In 1999, as a Hydroconstruction engineer, he worked on the Mostar hydroelectric power plant (75 MW) and was responsible for the rehabilitation of the foundation outlet of the Salakovac hydroelectric power plant (210 MW). Similar to the Mratinje hydroelectric power plant (now the Piva hydroelectric power plant), designed to meet the needs of the Titograd Aluminum Plant, Salakovac supplied electricity to the Mostar Aluminum Plant, which employed about five thousand workers, but, mainly thanks to more advanced technology, produced slightly less than one hundred thousand tons of aluminum and ingots per year.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Yugoslavia reaped the fruits of economic development based largely on the centralist style of the five-year plan. Tito had at his disposal an educated workforce, many of whom had been educated in the West, and upon his return imposed a largely technocratic approach to development, although the constitutionally proclaimed model of governance was self-management. This hybrid model of socialism, between the West and the East, enabled planning and, thanks to “easy borrowing” in the West, the implementation of long-term projects. Yugoslavia produced smaller military aircraft (which is why, among other things, it pushed for its own source of aluminum). Submarines were being built in the vicinity of Zagreb (Končar and others) and the military industry (Unis) met not only its own needs for the strength of the third army in Europe, but also exports, mainly to the markets of non-aligned countries. The electronics industry developed, Iskra and Energoinvest produced modern telephones and computers, and the Electronic Industry of Niš was not far behind. The Krško nuclear power plant was built. The Vinča and Jožef Stefan Institutes, with the support and cooperation of the USA, even worked for a time on the development of the atomic bomb.
In 1988-1989, during my postgraduate studies in computer science at the Faculty of Economics in Mostar, I was fortunate enough to attend lectures on expert systems (the forerunner of today's artificial intelligence) given by Prof. Vladislav Rajković from the Jožef Stefan Institute (IJS).
In those years, the IJS focused on symbolic and rule-based artificial intelligence: heuristic search, expert/knowledge- and rule-based decision systems (Prolog), early machine learning/inductive methods, and work on emerging natural language/speech. During a visit to the library of the Technical University of Munich in 1989, I found that Bratko, Bohanec, and Rajković were the authors of two of the ten books on display in the field of expert systems. I remember Rajković warning us that one day - when computers become "more intelligent," that is, when their knowledge bases expand, with the development of fast microprocessors - simultaneous interpretation will be instantaneous and that symbolic language, similar to Chinese script, will prevail. Here we are, 35 years later at the LLM.
Professor Zoltan Baraczkai taught us Decision Theory and urged us not to be afraid of computers and computer systems, but not to forget to think for ourselves. He encouraged us to learn. “In the future, illiterate people will not be those who cannot read, but those who have not learned to learn,” said Professor Baraczkai. Thanks to a mutual friend, Dragan Šaj, Professor Baraczkai and I got to know each other better and started hanging out. We established cooperation on a pilot project to build an expert system for Hidrogradnja, where I worked at the time and which enabled me to complete my postgraduate education. Hidrogradnja was then one of the leading construction companies in Yugoslavia.
At one of the meetings with the top management of Hidrogradnja, Professor Baraczkai impressively and convincingly “shaken” the management with his thesis on Hidrogradnja’s survival strategy. “Hidrogradnja generates 50% of its revenue from the domestic, Yugoslav market, and an additional 35% from Iraq and 15% from Libya. These three countries do not base their growth on a market economy. In order to reduce the risk of a possible collapse of these countries, you need to open a new market, a Western, stable market,” said Professor Baraczkai. Who then, in 1988, believed that all three of the above-mentioned countries - Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya - could collapse? But, behold, wars happened. Hidrogradnja is no more...
Murphy's Law states that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
At the beginning of the wars in Yugoslavia, Professor Baraczkai moved to Budapest. He teaches there. We meet on Google Meet, almost every month.
I cited these lines from the past as a warning that crises do not arise overnight. They follow us. They are an integral part of life. Like the seasons. When winter approaches, the householder should prepare firewood. A serious state should provide electricity. If it is available to the citizens at an affordable price. The kind that enabled the Titograd Aluminum Plant to be profitable in the 1980s. These are the years that we increasingly regret, the happy times when "a job, an apartment and a vacation at the seaside awaited us."
Of course, this is a romanticized past, but in the face of a bleak present and a completely unpredictable AI future, what choice do we have but to reimagine the past?
And yes, none of this is the fault of artificial intelligence, not even this Zeitgeist that we will soon receive as a gift in exchange for the lost “job, apartment and vacation at the seaside”.
PS German noun Spirit has several meanings, primarily in philosophy. In Montenegrin it can be translated as:
Phantasm: refers to a supernatural entity. For example, AI.
Spirit: often associated with religious contexts, such as the Holy Spirit.
Mind or intellect: refers to cognitive functions and mental processes.
PPS German term Zeitgeist translates as “spirit of the times.” It refers to the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of a particular era. This concept suggests that each period in history has a unique character that influences the thoughts, behaviors, and values of the people living at that time.
The author is a civil engineer.
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