You Might Also Like: The Next Five

**Mo Gawdat** (0:03)
I think that's where we stand today. We're raising Superman, and sadly, we're being very bad parents.

**José Manuel Durão Barroso** (0:08)
First of all, I'm not so obsessed with the idea of leadership. Why should we be leading? Sometimes there is a second-mover advantage in the economy. We don't need to be always the leader.

**Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade** (0:18)
Because it's not just about the availability of power for the data centers, it's how do you keep power prices also affordable for people.

**Mo Gawdat** (0:24)
If you ask me about one thing that the world needs to be aware of and work on, is what I call the MAD map spectrum, the mutually assured destruction versus mutually assured prosperity.

**Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade** (0:36)
Clearly, AI can impact the industry in a positive sense, for sure. The utility space and the energy space, it can have improvements. Let's face it, it is a vampire at the moment. I mean, it is clearly sucking up a lot of power. If it's not managed properly, it will create a lot of pressure on society, on energy prices, on the consumers.

**José Manuel Durão Barroso** (0:57)
So the best thing is to diversify. Diversify the sources of energy, diversify the countries of origin, diversify the supply chains, and diversify also the transit routes, and of course, invest also in new sources for the future.

**Mo Gawdat** (1:11)
The opportunity is absolute abundance. That's the opportunity. And if we all agree on the opportunity and chase that, that would be amazing. Like genuinely, we would redefine longevity, we would redefine productivity, we would redefine climate change. Everything is possible with more intelligence.
I'm daring the whole world that when I can borrow 400 IQ points from AI, I'll probably be able to have a garden outside where you walk to one tree and pick an apple, and walk to another tree and pick an iPhone.

**Tom Parker** (1:51)
We are living in an era defined by a new kind of power shift. It's not only measured in borders and markets, but in gigawatts and gigaflops. Every line of code generated in every industrial process optimized by artificial intelligence is tethered to a physical reality, the data centre. These silent humming monoliths have become the new cathedrals of the 21st century, and their appetite is unprecedented.
In a statement in November last year, OpenAI said they needed 30 gigawatts of compute capacity. This is a third of the peak demand on the US grid. They said that they would be adding about 1 gigawatt a week. A gigawatt is about the power created by a small to medium-sized nuclear power station. But by 2033, Altman predicts that they will require 250 gigawatts.
This is as much as India's yearly usage, the most populated planet in the world. So let's get our heads around that for a second. How on earth are we going to be able to create and sustain the power demand of AI? But this isn't just a technical challenge. It's a diplomatic powder keg.
With the Strait of Hormuz slowly recovering from a blockade and the global energy market reeling from price hikes, we have entered a world of energy realism. Furthermore, is the machine a monster that will break our grids and stall the transition? Or is it the only navigator capable of steering us through the complexities of a changing climate and the demands of a green transition? Nations are being forced to choose, do they prioritize rapid AI dominance, fossil fuel security, or their net zero promises?
Welcome to The Next Five podcast. I'm Tom Parker and today we are launching a new six-part mini-series called Power Shifts. We'll be discussing what is powering our modern and fast evolving world today, as well as the blueprints, the tech and the strategies to transition to a net zero future. For this first episode, we're going into the diplomatic boardrooms, inside the data centres and deep into the energy powering everything in between. We are joined today by three titans to tackle this volatile topic. First up, we have José Manuel Durão Barroso, Prime Minister of Portugal from 2002 to 2004, and the man who led Europe through a decade of crises as European Commission President from 2004 to 2014

**José Manuel Durão Barroso** (4:41)
My pleasure.

**Tom Parker** (4:42)
Also with us is Mo Gawdat, a software engineer, entrepreneur, author, podcaster, public speaker, and former Chief Business Officer at Google X. He is the man that saw the scary, smart future of AI before it was on every smartphone.

**Mo Gawdat** (4:59)
Honoured to be here. Thank you.

**Tom Parker** (5:00)
And finally, Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade, CEO of EDP, a global energy company.

**Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade** (5:07)