Data will be intimately connected to the future of energy systems, but today’s AI platforms are unlikely to be the driver of energy-related data innovation. The reason for this is simple: energy systems will evolve to use less raw material, and to be more sustainable, lightweight, and distributed in their production and storage capacity; as this happens, data will need to be managed in ways that are more flexible and localized, and that can operate efficiently and accurately without central control.
The Liberate Systems ethos traces innovation back to the need to solve—and transcend—big challenges. We shorthand our approach as Challenge : Idea : Function. What this means is: We will not transcend a major global challenge—like climate change—until we find the new ideas that deliver functionality at scale, and which can operate without causing or contributing to the crisis we hope to resolve and transcend.
While the focus in 2025 has been largely on the rise of artificial intelligence systems, today’s AI platforms run on conventional computation technology. Their abilities are important and point to new directions in computation and knowledge-sorting and redistribution, but they are not yet suited to the design challenges that are emerging and which will soon be everyday imperatives across the world.
We see these design challenges as including:
- The need to generate energy without pollution;
- The need to process information without unsustainable resource extraction;
- The need to develop local economies in ways that do not degrade health, security, wellbeing, and the fiscal stability of cities and nations;
- The need to put real technological capacity, energy, insight, and agency, in the hands of billions more people;
- The need to organize a light-speed transition to breakthrough systems and practices, while decentralizing power and affluence.
All of these design challenges ultimately come back to four core needs:
- New materials;
- New business models;
- New systems for organizing everyday affluence;
- Information that lives across the landscape of interaction.
Consider the question of climate security:
- We need adaptation and resilience measures.
- We need to restore and conserve Nature.
- We need to build carbon biomass in soils, in marine ecosystems, in forests, and in green infrastructure landscapes.
- We need to measure all of this and put measurement and verification capacity—along with Earth systems science insights—in the hands of even the most marginal people and communities.
- We need energy systems that are so lightweight, they might not seem like infrastructure by today’s standards.
We are moving into a period in human history when information technology will live in places and be embodied by objects we have never associated with computation. The lighter and less intrusive these smart materials are, the more sustainable our reimagining of infrastructure and technology will be.
Ephemeral smart materials are emerging as a mainstream technology need, the power of which is still not well understood. As applied quantum science advances, and we get closer to being able to reliably manage information through quantum mechanical interfaces, the possibilities for an unprecedented leap in energy production, information management, and the reinvnention of financial mechanisms—and money itself—are diversifying and coming into view.
NOTE: None of these major advances will be possible unless strict information security standards are established that allow for decentralized high-intensity low-energy advanced computation, without intrusion or harvesting of data through predatory data system operators. While that may seem contrary to leading AI companies’ business strategies, it is where the biggest opportunity for both direct and secondary ROI is waiting.
We might be two generations (30 to 40 years) from being able to harness quantum intelligence in ultralightweight materials, but it will eventually be a bigger breakthrough than decarbonization, cryptocurrency, or AI. The nations, sectors, and systems that are least disrupted and best positioned to thrive in that new world will be those that recognize the importance of:
- Decentralization of capability and affluence;
- Rapid, pervasive decarbonization;
- Human-centered, human-managed AI systems;
- Near-zero impact industrial systems, including the ability to make advanced smart ephemeral materials without pollution;
- The transformational potential of investing in value-building practices that eliminate preventable harm.
The challenge inherent in developing ephemeral materials that can transcend the crises of our late industrial moment will be a multigenerational race to the top. Liberate Systems will continue to report on leading-edge thinking that supprots development of these materials that can access, manage, manipulate, and deliver energy, information, and affluence, in ways not currently possible.
