Conflict has a strange way of clarifying what matters.

My version did not begin in a hospital; it began within large systems. I spent years in GovTech, working around people with sharp minds and strong credentials. These were rooms full of people who could model complex systems, design frameworks, and speak in perfect abstractions.

Yet sometimes a quiet question kept returning: what are we actually trying to change? But when you ask deeper questions, you disturb the template.

Why this structure? Who benefits from this decision? What problem are we truly solving? Are we building systems that serve people, or systems that serve themselves?

That is where conflict appears.

People discover that their role no longer matches their values. Others realize they have optimized for status instead of impact. A few see that they are surrounded by smart colleagues, yet moving in a direction they would never choose if they started fresh.

I went through that friction myself.

There were nights when I couldn’t fall asleep cause my mind kept circling the same thought: if I keep following this template, where does it lead? And more importantly, where do I want to go?

Facing that tension changed how I saw work and relationships. I began to notice that most large problems are more human than technical. People working next to each other without shared values. Brilliant minds solving the wrong problem together.

That realization pushed me toward a simple focus: a meaningful connection between people who actually want to build the same future.

When you face it, you start asking better questions. Not only to the people around you, but to yourself. Why am I here? What kind of problems deserve my time? Who do I want to struggle alongside?

Those questions reshape your circle. They change how you evaluate opportunities. They expose gaps in the systems you once accepted.

And if you follow them far enough, they pull you into conversations and collaborations you could not have predicted. You begin to meet people who carry their own conflicts, their own clarity, and their own urgency to build something that matters. That is where real change starts.

The most interesting part is what happens next: when enough individuals stop smoothing over their conflicts and start using them as a compass…

As of the beginning of 2026, electricity consumption by companies engaged in AI has reached critical levels, accounting for about 1.5% of total global consumption (approximately 415 TWh per year). In the United States, this figure is even higher - data centers consume more than 4.4% of the nation’s electricity.

For context, these 415 TWh exceed the annual electricity consumption of such industrialized countries as France or the United Kingdom.

Consumption of Leading Companies (2024 - 2025)

Tech giants developing AI are already consuming more energy than many entire countries:

• Google: ~30.8-32.1 million MWh (95.8% of this volume is attributed specifically to data centers).

• Microsoft: ~23-24 TWh.

• Meta: ~15 TWh.

• Apple: ~3.5 TWh.

• NVIDIA: ~0.6 TWh.

Energy Intensity of Individual Operations

Early electricity was needed for light and work, today, there is a need for electricity for thinking and answering. A standard Google search query consumes about 0.3 Wh of electricity. A request to ChatGPT or Gemini requires approximately 3 Wh. Generating a single AI-based video can require up to 3.4 million joules, which is equivalent to charging hundreds of smartphones.

The 360-hectare “Stargate” data center by Microsoft and OpenAI will require enough electricity to power 300,000 households. The main challenge now is that the power grids in many regions - especially in Virginia, where the largest concentration of data centers is located - are simply unable to adapt quickly enough to such a level of demand. Companies have realized that solar and wind power are too unstable for data centers that must operate 24/7.

Microsoft and Three Mile Island: Microsoft has signed a 20-year agreement to restart a previously shut-down reactor at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. This is an unprecedented case in which a single private company is purchasing the entire output capacity of a nuclear power plant.

The Helion Energy project, in which Sam Altman has invested more than $375 million (his largest personal investment), is a key element of his AI development strategy. Altman is convinced that without a breakthrough in energy production, creating powerful artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be impossible due to the enormous energy demands of computing centers.

AI and nuclear fusion form a “technological loop” within Helion: AI helps develop energy generation, which in turn will power even more advanced AI systems. For what? Will we find medicine for cancer or produce more bitcoins? It reminded me of my own old story.

Ten years ago (in age “without” AI), I wanted to write a book. The story was about a dwarf and his journey home. He and his friends had to cross lands and seas. It was a classic story in John Tolkien’s style. But it was something different. Dragons didn’t fly to the dwarves’ land (rock) for their gold. They didn’t even have gold.

Dwarves occupied not a simple rock, it was a volcano. They didn’t greed about gold, they wanted to create new magic for that world. They used a volcano as a thermal power plant to produce electricity. That magic was even more powerful than wizards had seen before. They almost finished their plant, but one dwarf found an egg in a cave in the rock. In that world, for many years, nobody seen dragons. The dragon was a symbol of greed - the greed of unreasonable power. Of course, as you can guess, they raised a dragon. As John Tolkien said, “If you live side by side with a dragon, please be considerate of it.” So, of course, the dragon burned their home with the dwarves. Our hero (dwarf) wants to go to the rock to find and rebuild the magic of dwarves - electricity, but before he has to fight the dragon. First of all, fight a dragon within himself.

In the future, we’ll see wars not for oil, but for electricity. Oh, shitt that war is already going on. The Russians occupied Ukrainian the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and destroyed almost all thermal power plants in Ukraine. That “dragon” (Russians) is burning everything around it, and it is not stopping. Today in Ukraine, there isn’t enough electricity, but they didn’t lose their souls or faith. They fight the dragon. It’s a good sign for us - we still have reason to produce electricity, not only for AI, but for mankind at all.

Everyone has fear, it’s normal. There are two types of fear: one protects you, and the other one paralyzes you. Maybe you fear parachute jumping. In reality, you don’t fear parachute jumping, but you fear dying or being injured in the process of that. Our mind create powerfull image of potential future, and this future is not happy for you :) This kind of fear protects your life from something bad.

At the same time, we have enough other useless fears. We fear changing our jobs or investing in ideas, or even meeting with someone. Your mind creates a powerful image of a potential future, and it is not a happy one. Why? How does our mind know the future? In the case of jobs or ideas, it’s not very easy know all the obstacles.

Scientists have discovered that a personal vision of the future depends on personal experience. Cognitive psychologist and professor at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, Endel Tulving, studied a patient with a rare form of amnesia. This person remembered practically all the facts he had known before the illness, but did not retain so-called episodic memories.

Episodic memories include those that:

• First, are somehow connected personally to us (that is, essentially autobiographical memories);

• Second, include temporal (when a certain event occurred), spatial (where this event occurred), and emotional characteristics (how you perceived the event at the time, what feelings it evoked in you).

Suppose you know that there is a band called Queen, whose main hits are Bohemian Rhapsody, We Will Rock You, and We Are the Champions, that its lead singer was Freddie Mercury, who was gay and died of AIDS. And that he sang a wonderful duet with Montserrat Caballé called Barcelona. All this is so-called semantic memory, or memory for facts.

But have you ever attended a concert by this band? Or perhaps watched a film about them? Did it touch your soul? How did you first become acquainted with their music?

These questions are already about episodic memory.

So, Tulving identified a patient who could not recall events from his past, yet retained fairly precise knowledge about the world. What do you think would happen if Tulving asked this patient about his plans for the future?

I think you’ve guessed — nothing. The patient literally fell into a stupor when asked what he planned to do tomorrow. That is, without episodic memory, in the literal sense of the word, we cannot imagine our future at all.

Or, if we look at it from another angle: in order to imagine our future, we must flip through the album of our autobiographical memories and stitch from them some image of our possible future self.

If there is nothing to stitch it from — that is, if known facts are in no way connected with our personal motivations and experiences — then even having all the data in our hands, we cannot assemble them into a picture of the future.

Even knowing everything, we will not be able to imagine what will happen tomorrow.

Such is the peculiarity of our memory: it is not enough for us to know certain facts, to be theoretically informed about something, in order to see the future to which they relate. No, in any case, we rely only on our life experience.

Is it the same with fears? “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.” - sounds good, but it depends on previous successful flights? Doesn’t?

Do people who don’t fear anything have only successful experiences, or do they have enough bad ones? Is failure a part of a successful future? Were many successful decisions based on failure?

Some fear depends on us (it’s useful fear), some fear doesn’t (it’s useless fear). I realized that science and art are born not only of geniuses but also of people who know how to confront their useless fears. They can find themselves. They can be yourself.

Our useless fears are like birds in our heads. Very often, we try to catch them. Create a cage for them. But our fears are just concepts of the future that we keep in cages. Instead of releasing them, we listen to them.

I spoke with my son. Like all teenagers, he is in a cross-transition period. His thoughts sometimes transform into fears, like birds. Those fears paralyze him in making decisions and finding happiness. Those “birds” (useless fears) in his head disturbed him every day and night. He didn’t sleep well at night. He dared to talk about it with me. I told him about the “birds” and asked him to set them free, because nobody knows the future. After that, he slept well.

When I want to see my future, I try to see my fears. If I can face my useless fears, I will change my future.

I should start my own journey in that world. Find my friend and my opposites. It’s my life, it’s my doughty.

You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.