Letter from Scotland

“I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond and began to cut some straight arrowy white pine for timber.”  It was 1845 in Massachusetts, and Henry David Thoreau was building a hut where he would live the simplest life possible and begin writing the first “environmentalist” book called simply, “Walden”.

It was a call to declutter our lives: “Simplify, simplify, simplify! This nation of ours is an overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture, tripped up by its own traps and spoilt by luxury and heedless expense.”

This picture of an idyllic Robinson Crusoe-style life came back to me this week as I felt overwhelmed by all the talk of AI, data centres and crypto-currency millionaires.  It may be my age, but I feel I’m being left behind by this speeding technology.

It was with some relief that I watched the King, at his gathering of tech leaders at Dumfries House, join the chorus warning of a take-over by AI.  But who is big enough to put the genie back in the lamp and place ethical limits on what it is allowed to do?  It should, of course, be the UN. Failing that, could there be a special agency like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Geneva Convention?  But would Presidents Putin, Xi and Trump pay any attention?

In the meantime, we in Scotland are having to consider 24 proposals for AI data centres in various suitable and unsuitable places, like Auchtertool in Fife, Easterhouse in Glasgow, and sites in North Lanarkshire, Falkirk, Edzell in Angus and Dounreay in Caithness. This week the Scottish parliament voted for a “pause”, until at least Christmas, before any local council approves a data centre. By then the government has promised to draw up guidelines on what is acceptable in terms of electricity demand, location, noise and disruption to communities.

The pause is a compromise, covering over a deep division of opinion on data centres. Those in favour say Scotland is well placed to host data centres since we can cope with their huge demand for electricity and water and remote locations. But those against say we should be using our wind power to provide electricity for transport and heating.

I’m not sure which side I’m on. I’m just baffled by the technology involved. For example, there is a firm in the news this week, which has been given £22m of government funding to “digitise the process for making molecules”. This will, apparently, speed up the discovery of new drugs and new materials.  A less welcome example is the creation of crypto-currencies, of which I am deeply suspicious – especially after hearing about those two £36m donations to Reform from two crypto-billionaires.  

I understand that managing these black currencies involves a large number of data centres.  As does the storage of every email, whether it’s significant or not.  Must there be a trail of our every moment of existence?

Surely we don’t need to keep a record of the extremely dull Labour leadership campaign in Scotland. A debate about the heart and soul of the moment it certainly was not. It was a policy-free zone. And thankfully it will end this weekend, with either Michael Marra or Joe Fagan being elected. Not much wonder Labour is in the doldrums, down below 20 per cent in the opinion polls, more than 10 points behind the SNP.

John Swinney, the SNP first minister, was in Cardiff on Monday, signing a joint agreement with the nationalist leaders of Wales and Northern Ireland to campaign for independence referendums all round.  They are asking the  prime minister Andy Burnham: is the United Kingdom a voluntary union of four countries or not ?

Up to now Burnham has said referendums are “off limits” but, he slipped up a little last week when he told the House of Commons that the route to a referendum in Northern Ireland, outlined in the Good Friday Agreement, also applied to Scotland.  That would make a referendum possible if there was a clear majority among the Scottish people for it.

Although the opinion polls show a narrow majority for independence, there is less enthusiasm for another referendum. It appears the people are saying “Now is not the time.” Even the SNP have recognised that.

So, for the moment, I can get back to the simplicity of Walden and try to ignore the sounds of AI soldiers marching towards us.