Silicon Boundaries
Understanding, anticipating, and managing the societal instability that can be caused by AI and related technologies
Silicon Boundaries
Silicon Boundaries is a joint programme from Theia Finance Labs and the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group.
Societies, like ecosystems, have conditions they need to function. They need a certain level of trust between people. They need institutions that work. They need economic systems that allow broad participation. They need people to be healthy enough, both physically and mentally, to engage in civic and economic life. These are not luxuries. They are preconditions for everything else, including the financial returns that investors depend on.
A Silicon Boundary is the point at which the scale or the nature of AI and related technologies begins to erode one of these preconditions. It is the threshold where the costs start to outweigh the benefits, and where continued deployment of such technologies without adjustment pushes society towards instability. Crossing these thresholds can trigger non-linear change and, in some cases, irreversible tipping points.
Similarities with Planetary Boundaries
Silicon Boundaries are analogous to Planetary Boundaries.
But one of the crucial differences is that the thresholds of Silicon Boundaries are not fixed. With climate, for example, you have relatively clear physical thresholds: 1.5 degrees, 2 degrees, the point at which ice sheets become unstable. The physics does not negotiate.
With Silicon Boundaries, the thresholds depend on context. They depend on how the technology is deployed, what safeguards are in place, how society responds, and what alternatives exist. That means boundaries can move, and are not the same in every society.
Boundaries move outwards when society adapts in ways that increase its resilience to technology risks: stronger regulation, better digital literacy, investment in real-world alternatives to screen-based activity, and robust institutions. All of these push boundaries further away, meaning society can absorb more compute without ever necessarily crossing the threshold into instability. But boundaries can also come closer when safeguards are absent or eroded.
Investors and companies are betting trillions on continued compute expansion. If society acts to constrain compute in order to stay within Silicon Boundaries, capital currently allocated to AI infrastructure and technology companies may be significantly mispriced. This is the Silicon Bubble, a concept that draws on our previous work on stranded assets, unburnable carbon, and the carbon bubble.
The Silicon Boundaries Framework
Our aim is to provide tools that can help companies, financial institutions, and governments contribute to society remaining within a safe operating space while realising the benefits of AI and related technologies.
To do this, we need to better understand how societal stability is affected by AI and related technologies, identify and monitor relevant thresholds, and develop responses that enhance resilience while dampening the drivers of instability.
We have created initial draft categories of Silicon Boundaries. These are:
- Information Integrity & Shared Reality
- Social Cohesion & Connectedness
- Political Stability
- Economic Participation & Distributional Stability
- Physical & Mental Health
- Safety, Security, & the State’s Monopoly on Violence
- Financial Stability & Capital Misallocation
- Rights, Consent, & Human Dignity
- Environmental Sustainability
Read the Report and listen to the Podcast
You can read our first report here [link to report]. You can also listen to our accompanying podcast, which discusses the framework and its implications [link to podcast].
Once we have established the boundaries, we will seek to define workable and practicable thresholds, and develop scenarios, data, and models that measure their impact on companies and portfolios, enabling investors, policymakers, and companies to assess and respond to Silicon Boundaries.
Directors
Directors
Co-Founder & Research Director, Theia Finance Lab
Jakob Thomä is one of the leading global experts on sustainable finance and long-term risks, and entrepreneur with a track record of incubating commercial and non-commercial sustainability solutions. He co-founded the 2° Investing Initiative entities in New York and Berlin and serves as Research Director of Theia Finance Labs. His book “Der Kill Score: Auf der Spur unseres ökologischen und sozialen Fußabdruck” explores the impact of sustainability on human lives.
Director, Oxford Sustainable Finance Group. Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow of Sustainable Finance, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford
Dr Ben Caldecott is the founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group and the inaugural Associate Professor of Sustainable Finance at the University of Oxford, a post maintained by an endowment and the first ever endowed professorship of sustainable finance. He is also a Supernumerary Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford. Ben operates across finance, policy, and research, working as part of boards and senior management, and with policymakers, regulators, and civil society on how to interpret and shape fast-moving energy, climate, environment, and wider sustainability topics.
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Silicon Boundaries is a new venture by Theia Finance Labs, developed in partnership with the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group, focused on understanding the risks from the ‘silicon economy’ to public welfare and the achievement of climate goals.
