Energy will be rationed. AI for surveillance will be at the top of the list, and household use by millions of ordinary people will be at the bottom. From Bruna Frascolla at strategic-culture.su:
If all of a country’s energy is concentrated in data centers, how can a steel mill, a car factory, or any factory be opened?
It’s a fact that artificial intelligence data centers consume a lot of energy, so the logical consequence is that someone is paying a higher energy bill. Late last month, Bloomberg, in an article titled “How AI Data Centers Are Sending Your Power Bill Soaring,” put a number to the problem and a face to its victims: in areas near data centers, electricity bills have risen 267% in five years.
The complex and fragmented U.S. power grid causes prices to vary greatly from location to location, so the increase is most felt in places with many data centers. This location is the poor state of Virginia, where 39% of the energy is consumed by data centers. Other heavily affected states are Oregon (33%), Iowa (18%), Nevada (15%), Utah (15%), and Nebraska (14%). According to Bloomberg, “the issue is especially pronounced in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro, where 15 major data centers are located. […] Rising home power costs contributed to a wave of electricity shutoffs during a frigid winter last year.” In other words, people in the world’s richest country are having to endure the cold because of the energy consumed by data centers.
Of course, it’s not just about data centers, but about a range of policy options. And bad things can always get worse. Because the U.S. is a plutocracy, a Republican lawmaker named Roy Klopfenstein proposed a bill to safeguard data centers from power problems. After all, if demand in a given location is too high, it can cause a power outage that affects everyone. To address this issue, the lawmaker proposes a “voluntary” program in which poor people allow their heaters to be remotely controlled to consume less energy, in exchange for lower bills. The bill states: “For customers that participate in the program, the utility may take actions to reduce the customer’s load at peak times, such as increasing the temperature on the customer’s air conditioner, reducing the temperature on the customer’s hot water heater, or cycling other appliances.”
