In a working economy, an increase in demand for electricity would be met with an increase in investment and capacity, and (at least in the long-term) would benefit all electricity buyers. I'm sure there are market failures going on here in many places but it's not necessarily the case that you and the companies be on opposing sides. There are positive-sum solutions to a lot of these problems, if people are willing to consider them.
The problem is that we don’t correctly price pollution: it’d be one thing if this boom meant acres of solar panels and wind turbines getting greenlit but in practice it means keeping some dirty plants online and building out new pollution capacity, sometimes completely illegally like what happened in Memphis.
All of this would go away overnight if we taxed carbon.
> Just south of the Tennessee-Mississippi state line sits dozens of unpermitted gas turbines that power xAI’s Colossus 2 data center while releasing smog-forming pollution, soot, and hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde. The tech company set up the de facto power plant with no permits, no public input, and no notice to nearby communities that will have to deal with the consequences.
being the key phrase. Until we get to that long term, the less price sensitve buyer can buy up all available goods.
for example, all of the gas turbines needed to generate electricity.
so it is impossible to invest in capacity for non-datacenter uses, because the raw ingredients have already been bought up by the data centers.
effectively, at current rate of investment, > 90% of investment into new power generation goes to data centers. That doesn't leave much for any kind of other economic growth, since all of our economic growth depends on electricity.
Don't all states have public utility commissions that regulate electricity provisioning? I don't know if the market has much to do with anything since it's all government regulation.
It's already speeding up medical progress, so it'll probably take roughly however much time it takes for you to be personally affected by something that is currently incurable.
Thanks for the response, but unfortunately "common sense" is not a source.
And unfortunately, these aren't actual examples of medical progress being made. AI in some capacity is absolutely going to be helpful for medical research, but I'm still very skeptical LLMs are what is going to do it. I also do not think all the other BS coming with the current LLM wave outweighs the benefits. I think the reaction would be much different if these things weren't conflated, and if the focus of AI was towards things like medical research. As it stands, it comes off more as a coping mechanism / excuse that I do not think is convincing for most people when they see the majority of AI is used for garbage (to put it lightly).
Tech bros whether they realize it or not are living a philosophy of fear. They say: in order for YOU to be healthy and safe, we should be allowed to trample THEM (the undesirables), because trust us, the end result will be worth it.
Why not both? Why not both technological progress hand in hand with progress in human rights?
They tell us that any slowdown to progress is evil, that they are justified in their crimes because in "the future" all will be fine and dandy.
And what a beautiful future they are bringing us, with the destruction of post WW2 prosperity, increasing wealth inequality, etc etc.