We have grown accustomed to imagining technological futures through a cyberpunk aesthetic: dazzling machines, degraded publics; frictionless computational power, frayed community bonds; neon-lit skyscrapers soaring above the slums of the dispossessed, and the inextinguishable hope in the flaming hearts of everyday people that the age of humanity will one day rise against the age of machines.

Indeed, cyberpunk’s greatest insight, familiar to anyone who has seen Blade Runner (1982) or The Matrix trilogy, is that under conditions of extraordinary wealth inequality, technological innovation oppresses and stifles rather than sustains and nourishes human freedom. It stratifies. It centralizes. It turns human beings into vestigial appendages of automated systems they no longer control. As a warning, then, the genre remains indispensable. But as a horizon for public policy or a target for venture capital, it is inadequate. Indeed, lawmakers and innovators who actively ignore the tangible harms implicated with the burgeoning Age of AI have lost the plot.

We do not need to inhabit William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) to recognize that an AI future built on extractive energy, monopoly power, and civic decay would be less a triumph than a trap.

What we need is a solarpunk future. Instead of a future modeled on the Neo-Tokyo of Akira (1988), imagine a sprawling New York City filled with colorful rooftop gardens, accessible and efficient public transit, neighborly community workshops, abundant walkable public space, and an energy portfolio that draws from a medley of renewable sources. 

It is easy to treat this as only an aesthetic preference, as though solarpunk were simply cyberpunk with better lighting and more plants. But it is more than an art style. It is a political imagination. The distinction matters because AI is routinely discussed as though its supremacy over humanity were inevitable, as though it were an autonomous historical force rather than the product of deliberate human decisions about investment, infrastructure, labor, and research. We are certainly making the AI future. So why pass up the chance to answer the question of what kind of future we are choosing to make?

If cyberpunk is “high tech for the few, and misery for the many,” solarpunk asks whether technology can be embedded in a society that is more democratic, more ecological, and more humane. It shares something with hopepunk as well: the conviction that relentless optimism in the face of challenging circumstances is not naïveté, but a wilful, disciplined ethics of action and care. Solarpunk gives that ethical impulse material form in infrastructure, energy systems, housing, and design. The point is not simply to daydream about a perfect future. It is to take action on our dreams and insist that the future need not be as ugly, cruel, carbon-soaked, solipsistic, and nihilistic as the present.

AI is emerging amid a concomitant climate-energy crisis. Large-scale AI systems require enormous amounts of electricity, water, land, and minerals. The real question, then, is not whether AI will shape the future, but what kind of political economy will power it. If it is fed by speculative finance, increased fossil fuel consumption, and privatized abundance for a few, then AI will deepen the logic of cyberpunk: intelligence for the machine, insecurity for the public. But if AI is paired with grid modernization, storage, demand management, public transit, efficient buildings, and rapid renewable deployment, it could help build a more resilient and democratic society. 

Renewables are not merely morally preferable. They are economically rational. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 91% of “newly commissioned utility-scale renewable capacity delivered power at a lower cost than the cheapest new fossil fuel-based alternative.” The present state of geopolitics further sharpens the case for renewables. Even after oil fell sharply on April 17 as hopes for a ceasefire reopened the Strait of Hormuz, the Iran war had already sent crude above $100 a barrel and exposed, once again, the volatility of fossil-fuel dependence.

In moments like this, renewables become not just greener, but comparatively cheaper and strategically safer in the short term because they are not hostage to tanker routes, chokepoints, and war premiums. A solar panel does not care about naval blockades. A wind farm does not panic at the price of Brent Crude. 

And while the United States still talks about AI as though it were a race that can be won by software alone, China is moving on two tracks at once: AI and clean energy. Stanford’s 2026 AI Index reports that China “leads in publication volume, citations, patent output, and industrial robot installations,” even as the United States remains ahead on the “top-tier” models. At the same time, Reuters reports that China produces more than 80% of the world’s solar-panel components and continues to press its advantage in alternative energy and low-cost AI development. In other words, Beijing appears to understand something Washington still resists: the future belongs not simply to the country with the smartest model, but to the one that can power intelligence at scale.

Therefore, the choice before us is not AI or no AI. It is whether AI will be cyberpunk or solarpunk: extraction or stewardship, enclosure or democracy, scarcity for the many or flourishing that is widely shared. Indeed, we might reconsider if our current technological trajectory aligns with a pursuit of the good life. In any case, if we are serious about building a so-called intelligent future, it must also be livable, democratic, and sunlit.

Robert T.F. Downes is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, specializing in political theory and public law. He is also a Beneficial and Ethical AI at UConn (BEACON) AI Safety Policy Fellow.