AI could make humans extinct say researchers  September 14th 2026

AI Agents Are Thirsty for Power | WIRED

Silicon Valley is shifting away from chatbot queries toward a future filled with resource-intensive agentic AI—and it's driving the data center buildout.

“What on earth are they building all of these data centers for?” an exasperated friend asked me recently.

They’re not the only one asking: We got several similar questions on our recent data center livestream. It’s a really reasonable thing to wonder about. After all, if AI is already making all these breakthroughs, why are tech companies taking on billions of dollars of debt and constructing some of the biggest power plants in the world to build even more data centers?

The answer isn’t to help the average user search for recipes or look up places to visit on a vacation; simple chatbot queries are an increasingly outdated way of thinking about how AI works. Now, AI is all about agents—there’s no official definition, but roughly speaking, agents are large language model-based systems designed to make autonomous decisions to execute a task—and the shift towards them is part of what’s driving Silicon Valley’s power buildout.

Overcoming the AI trust gap

AI raises questions about client trust in financial decision-making. Here are a few of those questions.

Artificial intelligence is already working its way into everyday insurance operations. It can speed up underwriting, flag suspicious activity, summarize documents and help service teams respond faster. Those benefits are meaningful. But there is another question that matters just as much for advisors: What happens when a client receives an AI-influenced decision and wants to know why?

For advisors and benefits professionals, that is not simply a technology question. It quickly becomes a client-relationship question. A customer may never interact with the data provider, model developer or operations team behind an automated process. The person they know is their advisor. When an approval takes longer than expected, a risk class changes or more information is requested, the client is likely to ask, "What happened?" How that conversation is handled can shape whether the technology feels helpful or frustrating.

In Bots We Trust? For Insurance?

Accenture's Michael Reilly imagines a world in which AI agents do the shopping for personal lines insurance — a world where price may no longer determine

Executive Summary

Researchers presented different findings about the level of insurance customer trust in AI recently, with one suggesting they're warming up to the idea of using AI agents to shop and another finding the majority are still not using AI to research products and coverage. But when they do, change is likely to happen. Not only are AI users switching insurers, but Accenture's Michael Reilly believes that in the not-too-distant future, when AI agents do the shopping, they'll look at factors other than price, including claims reputation, service quality and ease-of-doing-business in making coverage recommendations. “The carriers that thrive will not necessarily be the cheapest. They will be the ones that make their real value—claims, service, ease, integrity—as easy for a machine to find and trust as it is for a person to admire,” wrote Reilly, who is managing director for insurance consulting and operations at Accenture, in a report titled, “When the Customer Sends a Bot to Shop.”

ARTICLE

Acrisure bets on Palantir to reshape insurance workflows

Acrisure, the global FinTech group spanning insurance, reinsurance, payroll, benefits, cybersecurity and real estate services across 19 countries, has launched Auris AI, an applied artificial intelligence platform developed with Palantir Technologies to bring together data, workflows and decision-making across its business.

Built using Palantir’s Ontology framework, Auris AI brings client records, carrier relationships, contract details and operational data into a single environment, with permissions and controls designed to govern how information is accessed and used.

The platform gives insurance teams a shared view of client intelligence, growth opportunities, risk insights, placement activity and service requirements, helping employees identify opportunities, coordinate work and respond to clients without relying on fragmented systems.

AI Data Centers Are on Track to Fuel ‘Explosive’ Growth in Captive Insurance

A form of self-insurance often associated with mining, oil and other environmentally risky sectors is quietly transforming the market for physical-risk coverage, thanks to the rise of mega AI data centers.

A form of self-insurance often associated with mining, oil and other environmentally risky sectors is quietly transforming the market for physical-risk coverage, thanks to the rise of mega AI data centers.

Captives — whereby firms sidestep traditional insurers and instead set up their own in-house insurance - is emerging as a go-to coverage model for the infrastructure around artificial intelligence, according to Michael Serricchio, US and Canada captive solutions leader at Marsh, the world's biggest insurance broker.

"What you're going to see is an explosive growth in the use of captives to take on the portfolio risks for data centers," Serricchio said in an interview. "Inadvertently, some of the risk for build-outs, construction, surety, property and liability will end up in their captive." He declined to provide details of individual companies, noting the sensitivity associated with such deals.