Do we have enough talent and power for the future of AI?

It's a very uncomfortable end to June with temperature records once again being broken across Europe. The technology world is moving forward unabated, though, still talking about AI and, in particular, the workforce and infrastructure that underpins it.

Do we have the talent to meet the demand for AI? Do we have the power to keep our data centers operational? And can the European Union get us off our dependence on Google Workspace and Microsoft 365?

ITPro's news editor Ross Kelly joins Jane and Bobby to look back on some of the most interesting stories of the month.

Highlights

"It's a paradox, isn't it. AI is going to remove and destroy half of the entry-level roles within the next decade. White-collar roles are going to be impacted, but at the same time, we're dealing with a massive deficit, specifically for AI roles. The messaging here is so all over the place, so consistently, that I think a lot of people are just maybe a bit jarred by it all."

"The higher occupancy, the greater the energy draw, and if you've got a problem with energy supply, then greater tenancy or greater occupancy rather becomes a problem. I understand the problem of electricity demands, sitting here in a heat wave. People are already talking about how if everybody deploys air conditioning into their houses, that it's going to cause a problem for the national grid. I understand that, but the bit about occupancy being so high, I'm baffled that this is allegedly a negative part of this story."

"Not to offend any guests of said podcast, but it does sometimes feel like a bit of a 'no true Scotsman' argument when it comes to open source. That this isn't quite actually open source because this tiny bit of it is not actually, or this isn't open source because it's actually based on this thing that is a commercial thing belonging to somebody else. I think it's possible that the Document Foundation has a point that what the European Union has declared is like this open source saying truly sovereign whatever isn't, it's kind of halfway there, but I do also wonder if there's sort of almost a back compatibility stepping stone type thing going on, because already lots of organizations within the European Union will have been using Microsoft, so it might just be easier to have something that's based on Microsoft standards initially before then transitioning to something else."

Links

• UK faces huge AI talent shortage
• The UK is running on fumes as data center build-outs can't keep pace with demand
• Euro-Office 'sovereignty' claims questioned in scathing open letter by LibreOffice maintainers