The road to tech transformation is historically rocky, and past tech transformations have created economic recessions in their wake.

Nonetheless, new technologies have been historically transformational in nature and have created new dynamics, new economies and new prosperity.

Follow the money.

How is this relevant in 2025? Let’s start with the impact of the massive amount of spending on new AI technologies in the U.S. alone, as described in a recent CNN interview by author Derek Thompson, co-author of the book “Abundance”.

“We need to talk about what artificial intelligence is doing in this economy. As we speak, the biggest hyperscalers, that is to say that big tech companies like Meta and Microsoft, are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe up to $400 billion this year, on the infrastructure to build artificial intelligence. That's things like computer chips, data centers, and electricity. Last quarter, spending on artificial intelligence added more to (U.S.) GDP than total consumer spending. That statistic is completely crazy. Consumer spending is 70% of the economy. There are 300 to 320 million Americans; the growth of all of their spending on everything, gyms, mortgages, rent, did not exceed what these handful of companies spent on GPU computer chips, data centers, and electricity to build that artificial intelligence. So we need to talk about not just what AI will be in the future but how it is defining the economy in 2025.”

The infrastructure to support AI has created huge electricity demand to power data centres and is challenging plans for energy transformations aimed at lowering emissions. It is creating a new energy economy in the U.S. and in Canada.

Data centre development presents a huge opportunity for Alberta’s economy. Alberta’s AI Data Centre Strategy, supported by the Government of Alberta, outlines a path for $100 billion worth of AI data centre infrastructure in the next 5 years. AI has enabled new technologies and analytical methods for Alberta’s oil and gas industry, which is entering a new digital regime – finding new ways for data to be found, created, modelled, analyzed, and shared.

Due to AI’s energy-intensive nature, managing grid reliability while lowering emissions is a key challenge to the success of AI. Globally, surging power demand combined with the desire to lower emissions affordably has led to a surge in LNG demand. U.S. LNG is booming, aided by last month’s U.S./ EU $750 bn purchase agreement, according to Bloomberg.

Brad Hayes, Adjunct Professor - University of Alberta, says Canada possesses an immense potential for LNG due to easy trade access across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and due to strong existing Indigenous partnerships. He sees the challenge of attracting investors as solvable, even though the complicated regulatory frameworks that Canada has in place have caused project delays.

Resourceworks.com lists 32 projects that have been abandoned or shelved in the last 10 years and reports “One estimate is that Canada has seen $670 billion in cancelled oil, gas, LNG and pipeline projects alone since 2015.”

At the upcoming virtual Energy Transformation Forum Canada (MDT), together with Bill Whitelaw, Executive Advisor at Rextag, Hayes intends to discuss how to define what Canada can provide to win the attention and investment of investors, as well as examine some new LNG innovations and tech that might expedite exports and build capacity.

The keynote speaker at the same conference will discuss defining the economic impact of AI data centers and the new energy economy that is emerging from the AI boom.

Brad Hayes, Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta (left), and Bill Whitelaw, Executive Advisor at Rextag (right), will be speaking at the Energy Transformation Forum Canada this September.

There will be a focus on defining the full economic impact of the Alberta AI strategy for both Alberta and Canada. In keeping with the EU and some of the foreign markets’ interests in low-emission power, they'll also discuss strategies for managing emissions by keeping them low through strategies like carbon capture, storage and renewable natural gas.

AI – Bubble or the most important Tech of the 21st Century?

No discussion of the impact of AI would be complete without considering the question that is now being raised about the surge in AI investment and spending, and whether AI is an economic “bubble” or truly transformative. Will the demand that funds a good part of the energy transformation dry up if the AI bubble bursts? Comparisons are being made to the Dot-com bubble of the 1990s.

Author Derek Thompson says AI, just like some previous disruptive technologies, is both a bubble and transformative.

“AI is most likely both a bubble and eventually going to be the most important technology of the 21st Century. That wouldn't make it the first technology to essentially check both of those boxes. The railroads in the 19th century were an extraordinary bubble. In fact, recessions in the 19th century were often called railroad depressions, because it was crashes in railroad credit that were significantly responsible for crashing the economy in the 1800s. Railroads were a bubble, and they ultimately changed the world.”

Thompson acknowledges that the Dot-com bubble and the broadband build-out accompanying it was a bubble that also changed the world. He foresees an adjustment to AI growth over the next few years.

“Even though we might see a bubble in the next few years, what's going to come out of that bubble is again, akin to the internet. We had a Dot-com crash, but ultimately, internet companies have defined the 21st Century. I think we'll probably see an AI crash sometime in the 2020s, and also the companies that come out of that crash will probably define the 2030s.”

For over 40 years, the Canadian Institute has provided the opportunities that bring together business leaders, professionals and international experts from around the world to learn, meet, network and make the contacts that create the opportunities.

Our conferences and related products connect the power of people with the power of information, a powerful combination for business growth and success.