Data Centers (Largely for AI Use) Raising Consumer Electric Bills

[Post-Doctorate D]

Not only are AI tech companies trying to put people out of work, they are making electrical bills more and more unaffordable.

Source: "Data centers are concentrated in these states. Here's what's happening to electricity prices"

Time to either shut these monstrosities down or make them rely on their own off-grid solutions to power themselves.  They are AI, right?  Should be easy for them to figure out a way to generate their own electricity 100% off-grid.  Maybe they can use a combination of solar power and hot air from tech execs and AI proponents mouthing off about how wonderful it all is.

[Jeff Tanyard]

The ideal place to build these things would be in the Great Lakes region so as to take advantage of the abundant fresh water (which has the added benefit of being quite cold) for cooling the new (preferably nuclear) power plants needed to run the data centers.  Build a dedicated nuclear plant on the shore of Lake Michigan or Lake Superior and put a data farm next to it.  Rinse and repeat.

The reason we don't do this, of course, is due to government burdens and graft burdens.  It takes forever to get a new nuclear plant built due to the red tape involved.  Also, business-friendly states are generally in the south, not the north, so that's where business and capital are going.  So we get data centers in hot desert states like Arizona and Texas, places where the laws of thermodynamics suggests they shouldn't be at all.   

The best place on the continent for data centers would be in northern Canada on the shores of their big lakes (Great Bear Lake, Great Slave Lake).  The area is almost devoid of people and development due to the harsh climate, so you wouldn't be gobbling up valuable real estate.  But data centers are strategic infrastructure, so realpolitik means they should be built in the contiguous 48 states, so with that in mind, I'd ideally put them in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Anyway, just my two cents.   

[Hopscotch]

Are you telling me AI can't solve its own problems? 

[Post-Doctorate D]

So, our electric bills are high so people can have imaginary boyfriends/girlfriends:

"They Fell in Love with A.I. Chatbots - and Found Something Real"

When I was a kid, our imaginary friends didn't require a boatload of electricity to exist, nor did we have our private conversations recorded by third-parties for their benefit.  And, then, we grew up and those imaginary friends went away.

But now?  I don't know.  It seems very much like we're stuck in the "Whom Gods Destroy" episode of Star Trek.

[Jeff Tanyard]

So, our electric bills are high so people can have imaginary boyfriends/girlfriends:

"They Fell in Love with A.I. Chatbots - and Found Something Real"

When I was a kid, our imaginary friends didn't require a boatload of electricity to exist, nor did we have our private conversations recorded by third-parties for their benefit.  And, then, we grew up and those imaginary friends went away.

But now?  I don't know.  It seems very much like we're stuck in the "Whom Gods Destroy" episode of Star Trek.

Or perhaps we're stuck on Calypso's island.

In The Odyssey, it took Athena's plea to Zeus to end Odysseus's sensory-overloaded captivity.  Who, or what, will be our Athena and Zeus?

[Post-Doctorate D]

Another story on AI data centers causing electrical supply prices to continue to go up dramatically:

"AI data center 'frenzy' is pushing up your electric bill ? here's why"

The U.S. economy is on track to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminum, steel, cement and chemicals, the IEA found.

I know that electric bills are ridiculously high where I am and if it's largely due to these huge data centers, I say shut them down.  If they can't go off-grid and run themselves off of solar or maybe have some of these AI companies employ people to ride bicycles to generate electricity, then shut them down.  If electric bills are becoming unaffordable so lazy people can have AI write their eMails for them or whatever, we don't need this AI stuff.  People can write their own bloody eMails.  "Oh, but AI can make my comic book!"  Learn to draw.  What is AI getting us?  Has cancer been cured?  Nope.  But the Internet is filling up with AI slop and electric bills are going up and up and up.  Something needs to be done about that.

Notice that politicians promising not to let these data centers drive up costs are winning.  Whether they live up to those promises is another issue but the point is that being anti-AI and/or anti-data centers seems to be a winning issue.

[Hopscotch]

As Iceland, California, Japan, elsewhere build geothermal plants on the sides of volcanoes, why not require zillionaires to build their AI plants on volcanoes, too?  I can see two potential bennies there.

[cecilia_writer]

Cancer hasn't been cured, but I'm sure some kind of AI will be used to expedite a cure or cures eventually.

[Bill Hiatt]

Eventually, the power demands will become prohibitive. The current political mood in the US is not in favor of developing alternate forms of energy, either, though that may change as time goes on.

My least favorite suggestion so far is that the AI server farms have preferential access to the power grid, so the rest of us can have blackouts and brownouts, but AI will be able to keep going. That's an illustration of why AI needs to be regulated.