Generative “AI” data centers are gobbling up trillions of dollars in capital, not to mention heating up the planet like a microwave. As a result there’s a capacity crunch on memory production, shooting the prices for RAM sky high, over 100 percent in the last few months alone. Multiple stores are tired of adjusting the prices day to day, and won’t even display them. You find out how much it costs at checkout.
Yeah, the main problems right now, seem to be electricity consumption, causing price hikes in surrounding areas.
Its not just electricity but also water consumption, and noise pollution if not particulate pollution too.
They provide little benefit to the surrounding communities with very few jobs by design and just consume local resources at usually discounted bulk rates to sell a service that possibly nobody locally would be in the market for
I have said this before somewhere, but this feels like something that would be very well suited for places where electricity prices have gone extremely low due to “too many solar panels”.
Also, in places with excess geothermal output etc.
What are these companies really basing their installation locations upon?
Which feels to me like terrible policies still. Make big projects pay their costs please!
It’s a bit different in this case.
The responsibility of providing electricity falls onto the nearby power plant, which then also has to increase their production.
But the maker of the new electricity consumer does not need to pay for the capital or anything else really, apart from the electrical rates (and some minimal fixed rates) that they are using.
Some governments are coming up with interesting, seemingly effective regulations, though.