Every industrial revolution has been shaped by physical assets. Coal fuelled the nineteenth century. Steel defined the twentieth. Artificial intelligence will define the twenty-first, but despite its digital image, AI is ultimately constrained by something very familiar: land, energy and infrastructure. For much of the past forty years, Britain’s post-industrial
Peter Griffiths
Every industrial revolution has been shaped by physical assets. Coal fuelled the nineteenth century. Steel defined the twentieth. Artificial intelligence will define the twenty-first, but despite its digital image, AI is ultimately constrained by something very familiar: land, energy and infrastructure.
For much of the past forty years, Britain’s post-industrial heartlands have been viewed through the lens of decline.
Former steelworks, engineering sites and manufacturing estates became reminders of industries that had moved elsewhere, even though many retained the infrastructure, engineering capability and energy connections that made them productive in the first place.
Artificial intelligence gives us an opportunity to see those places differently.
Much of today’s AI debate focuses on software companies, foundation models and hyperscale data centres. Far less attention has been paid to the physical infrastructure that makes AI possible….
