News AI data centers' soaring energy consumption is causing skyrocketing power bills for households across the US — states reporting spikes in energy co...

[Admin]

Americans are footing the bill for the sheer amount of electricity required to operate the data centers responsible for providing access to AI tools and services.

AI data centers' soaring energy consumption is causing skyrocketing power bills for households across the US — states reporting spikes in energy co... : Read more

 

[jg.millirem]

Good piece.

(Which could in turn make this the first time a "not in my back yard" mentality is somewhat justified.)

Oh, it’s not the first time.

 

[bit_user]

Wow, AI bros are practically making crypto bros look like environmentalists!

 

[DS426]

This last electric bill is the highest that I've ever paid. It was also consistently hotter than normal almost every day through the billing cycle, so it was a double whammy.

Guess I need to undervolt even more!

 

[ZAP!!]

Power will get more expensive. The largest consumers demand a discount from the producers. The producers don't want their profits to decrease so they give a discount to the large consumers then make up for it by charging more to the average consumer.

 

[bigdragon]

The price of electricity isn't the only thing increasing -- transmission costs are also jumping. A huge, fixed part of my monthly energy bill is transmission fees. AI bros want energy at the cheapest price too so they'll happily throw transmission lines up across an entire state (Maryland) to move electricity from where it's cheap (central Pennsylvania) to where it's more expensive (northern Virginia) due to all the data centers.

 

[JamesJones44]

If there ever was a constant with humans it is that no matter how energy effect things are made, more energy is aways needed. Maybe that will change someday, but so far it doesn't appear that it will be anytime soon.

 

[umeng2002_2]

All this to tell people to substitute salt for bromide....

 

[joey121215]

So not only do the rich get better tax breaks while the average American has to pay increased tariff prices, but now we have to pay their electric bill for them to sell us a service? Thanks Trump

 

[Savage1701]

So not only do the rich get better tax breaks while the average American has to pay increased tariff prices, but now we have to pay their electric bill for them to sell us a service? Thanks Trump

Umm, this has been a known consequence of AI growth for years. It’s just that the lefty tech bros didn’t want you to realize it.

AI should be required to either generate its own power or pay the highest marginal grid price. Not be given sweetheart deals by utilities.

American consumers shouldn’t have been or ever be required to subsidize this nonsense.

 

[hhuling86]

I have nor will I have any use for the AI slop but I guarantee you I'm going to have to pay for it. I did just fine for the first almost 22 years of my adult life without it 🤣

 

[hhuling86]

This last electric bill is the highest that I've ever paid. It was also consistently hotter than normal almost every day through the billing cycle, so it was a double whammy.

Guess I need to undervolt even more!

And it's only going to get worse. I mean if you really want to think about it, is perfectly logical to assume that the powers that be know that their policies are destroying the environment, but they don't care because the worse the environment gets the more extreme the weather and who's going to have to pay for that extremity? The average Joe

 

[umeng2002_2]

Is anyone using AI for anything at all? All I see are 5 seconds video clips and fake porn pictures.

 

[bit_user]

If there ever was a constant with humans it is that no matter how energy effect things are made, more energy is aways needed. Maybe that will change someday, but so far it doesn't appear that it will be anytime soon.

I forget what it's called, but Jensen recently cited an economic principle that predicts lowering prices will simply increase demand. The context was Deep Seek and its allegedly low compute requirements. His point was that if AI is becoming more efficient, people will simply use it more, thus cancelling out the efficiency gains and any corresponding decline in demand for GPUs.

Also, the history of computing shows that, no matter how efficient computers become (and they are still getting more efficient), those gains just enable the consumption of more compute resources, rather than an overall reduction in energy demand.

Anyway, the only way to counter the problems caused by increasing datacenter electricity demands is to ensure they're the ones who must shoulder the costs caused by the increased load. This will require governmental action, of some form.

AI should be required to either generate its own power or ...

No, I'd rather have regulated utilities, who are in the business of power generation, do that part. I don't trust the "run fast and break things" crowd, when it comes to that stuff.

 

[bit_user]

I have nor will I have any use for the AI slop but I guarantee you I'm going to have to pay for it. I did just fine for the first almost 22 years of my adult life without it 🤣

You're using AI without knowing it. Lots of services you use are now powered by it, and this will only increase.

Is anyone using AI for anything at all? All I see are 5 seconds video clips and fake porn pictures.

AI is a lot more than just LLMs and image generators. Pretty much every security camera now embeds deep neural networks for features like object detection, license place recognition, and face recognition. Medical labs are using AI to detect abnormalities in scans and blood chemistry. AI is being used to optimize many industrial and agricultural practices. AI is being used to optimize product designs, improve economic models, model protein interactions, the list goes on and on.

I even use MS Co-pilot at my job, though mainly just for code reviews. It's better than most other tools at catching easily-overlooked details. It's far from perfect, but it's caught enough errors that I feel it's worth continuing to use.

Edit: I just heard on the news that AI managed to design some new antibiotics that are effective against two major strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These are now killing about 1 million people per year, globally.

There are lots of hard problems in computer science that don't have good classical solutions. AI is wonderful for most of these.