"My culture is a very dominant culture, he said on MSNBC. It is imposing and it's causing problems. If you don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner. A decade later, I regret to inform you there is not a taco truck on every corner. But I am here to issue my own ominous warning about the takeover of America: not by immigrant culture but by AI culture."
"I'm not some sort of data-hater, OK? Datacenters physical facilities housing storage systems, servers and network devices are a critical part of powering the internet; if they disappeared, the modern world would cease to function. The banking system would collapse; you wouldn't be able to stream Netflix, go on social media, or (most importantly) read the Guardian online."
"But while we obviously need datacenters, the AI boom, and the enormous amounts of computing power it requires, has caused their footprint to massively expand and our utility bills to jump. When a data center comes online, retail customers usually help to foot the electric bill: American utilities sought almost thirty billion dollars in retail rate increases in the first half of 2025. Meanwhile Bloomberg reported on a new study this week that shows power prices on the largest electric grid in the US jumped 76% in the first quarter due to rampant demand from data centers."
"Today datacenters consume 6% of electricity supply in the UK and US; by 2030, they could account for more than 14% of the US's total power demand. It's not just how much they cost that's problematic. AI datacenters are noisy, emit pollution that could harm community health and divert much-needed resources."
AI growth is driving a major expansion of data centers, increasing their physical footprint and utility costs. Data centers are necessary for internet and modern services, including banking, streaming, social media, and online reading. Retail customers often help pay higher electric bills when new data centers come online. Power prices have risen sharply due to demand from data centers, and the situation is expected to worsen. Data centers already consume about 6% of electricity supply in the UK and US, with projections that they could exceed 14% of US total power demand by 2030. AI data centers can also be noisy, emit pollution that may harm community health, and divert resources from other needs.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]