Technology

And, funny enough, you would be doing them, the world, the datacenters, and yourself some good.

That’s probably true but you only get ⅓ of a day on average of power. Demands are still rising so the other ⅔ of the day prices are higher and likely still averages higher on average for an entire day even if ⅓ of it is so cheap.

Always has been

Residents in big cities have been experiencing it for decades at this point.

ConEd saying "We're preparing for the heat wave in your area this week. Please, limit your energy usage to prevent power outages."

Yeah, and times square is still lit up full brightness. The skyscraper offices aren't doing their part. Most of them, you can feel the cold on the street from their lobbies.

literally passing the bucks to us: https://apnews.com/article/electricity-prices-data-centers-artificial-intelligence-fbf213a915fb574a4f3e5baaa7041c3a

Charge higher rates for crypto and AI. No one should be hot or cold so some asshole can make more money.

This has been the case for decades, why would it change now?

Were you recently told your bill is gonna go up again when they put in that massive data center in a year or so? We were told. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ no option to say "fuck you, make them pay their bills." Nope. PSE&g was like "brace for it bitch." And that was it.

When they make up a significant amount of energy usage, the demands for amount and infrastructure like production and transfer increase.

They're not a consumer like the others in that their impact is much higher than what they pay for in terms of paying consumed power.

The article mentions data centers containing as much power as entire cities.

The way utility rates are set allows them to spread costs onto residential ratepayers instead of bearing it directly.

Bigger clients negotiate bulk discounts, basically. But the other factor at play here is supply and demand. The higher the demand, the higher the price for the supply. Household demand has remained more or less the same, but because data center demand has shot up, prices have too.

It does

The more you use, the cheaper it is

All the models are already too expensive for most people. Most people don't pay to use them, billionaire investors do. When the AI bubble bursts our retirement funds will collapse and billionaires will simply move money somewhere else.

I've been thinking this for some time. It just seems completely implausible that companies like OpenAI will continue letting the people of the world use their product for free, what with the ruthless material requirements involved in it's distribution and upkeep.

To me it seems clear that the right to intellectual property and the right to work or contribute meaningfully to a workplace (as if that were actually a right) are currently being blitzscaled. I.e. these guys are running their companies at a loss to allow their product to become a necessity. Once that's achieved you will no longer have the option not to use it and they will be able to charge whatever they like.

We really need to begin pressuring states and governance to protect us from the predatory business models of these venture capitalists.

Raking in vc money?