AI Tithe – Moon of Alabama

September 22, 2025

AI Tithe

A way over detailed essay looks at the rise of U.S. electricity prices:

What’s Happening to Wholesale Electricity Prices? – Construction Physics

Mark Ames delivers a short, not-AI driven, summary of the problem:

Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled – 21:53 utc · Sep 20, 2025

AI tithe on all Americans, so that a handful of billionaires can become trillionaires

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Given that most of the current 'Artificial Intelligence' Large Language Models (LLMs) are Garbage In, Garbage Out systems I find it difficult to justify their social costs.

Posted by b on September 22, 2025 at 11:47 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Where I live in NYC it is outrageous how much Con Edison charges for electricity. I dread summer now with electricity prices.

Posted by: Fortuna | Sep 22 2025 12:20 utc | 1

And I would like to ad Con Ed in NYC has a monopoly on the grid and that is why they can charge such ridiculous prices!

Posted by: Fortuan | Sep 22 2025 12:21 utc | 2

Go ahead, make me feel bad about all the money I spent on lipo4 batteries and solar panels and overly thick copper wiring and inverters and chargers and giant copper knife switches where simple isolator switches can no longer handle the load
But mark my words
The same people who brought you the Rona virus, and the DNA altering jab now want to turn off your electricity for between 8 weeks and 8 years. They want to do that to cover up the bankruptcy of the privileged debt based currency system, without letting the public know the system is flawed. They want to still be in charge after the bankruptcy, and they want to institute an even worse currency system. When you have no electricity, and because of that you have no water, no food no creature comforts, remember all that money I spent on a solar sailboat and the ability to slip the mooring line and retreat to a safe distance to watch the zombie apocalypse unfold.
No matter what The Donald says, watch that what he does is destroy “The Creature From Jackel Island” known as “The Federal Reserve” so America can return to a money measurement system that remains as consistent as a time measurement system or a distance measurement system.
Good luck. You urban dwellers are gonna need it!

Posted by: Hot Carl | Sep 22 2025 12:24 utc | 3

Bonfires burn themselves out in a wasteful spectacle. Nothing permanent remains.
This too shall pass.

Posted by: too scents | Sep 22 2025 12:31 utc | 4

The entire construction-physics article doesn’t mention AI with one word. The spike in wholesale electricity prices of 2022 is attributed to the explosion in gas prices (war on Russia) that year. The general trend is attributed to transmission constraints which lead to very expensive congestions, due to bottlenecks in the network. The network has not been adapted – says the author – to the very demanding requirements of the huge solar parks, which are located far away from population centers and which have huge fluctuations.
Construction-physics is basicly singling out the incompatability between the old network structures and the new modes of electricity production as the cause of the price increase.

Posted by: Hamburger | Sep 22 2025 12:39 utc | 5

A 30% price increase? Probably the cost of all the wind/solar nonsense that’s come on.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 12:43 utc | 6

I just asked Deep Seek about the causes of rising electricity prices in the US. It concurs with construction-physics about the network problems but emphasizes the energy costs more. Not just as a one-off-cause, but as a general trend. It also mentions regulatory costs, a common trend all over the world. This of course does not explain the sharp increase after 2022.
However, if you look at the construction-physics article, you can see that the wholsale price has not been continously going up. The consumer price has clearly been influenced by the necessity to price in the higher price risk for the producer, given the aforementioned problems.

Posted by: Hamburger | Sep 22 2025 12:51 utc | 7

@Hamburger | Sep 22 2025 12:51 utc | 7
You might find this article interesting:
https://semianalysis.com/2025/09/16/xais-colossus-2-first-gigawatt-datacenter/

Posted by: too scents | Sep 22 2025 12:57 utc | 8

Once again…it’s not technology…but how it’s implemented that is a real problem.

Posted by: Tannenhouser | Sep 22 2025 13:09 utc | 9

Large Language Models (LLMs) are Garbage In, Garbage Out systems

Depends on a task. It’s not a problem for creative writing, for example, where outputting fiction is what you want out of LLMs. But yes, it’s a pretty niche task.

Posted by: taukey | Sep 22 2025 13:17 utc | 10

Global Electricity Consumption (2024) / % of Global Electricity Demand
AI Data Centers: ~60–100 TWh / ~0.2–0.4%
All Data Centers: 415 TWh / ~1.5%
Aluminum Smelting: ~900–1,000 TWh / ~3–4%
Steel Production: ~300–400 / TWh~1–1.5%
I looked up the figures and it doesn’t seem much compared to industrial usage or normal data center usage tbh.
Even the “rapid expansion” projections says it’ll only grow to 200+ TWh/year by 2030.
Fair usage for a technology that can compress majority of humanity’s general knowledge into an easily searchable format for offline usage after a nuclear war.

Posted by: Jules | Sep 22 2025 13:35 utc | 11

The pressure put on electrical grids to bump transmission to handle data center needs has caused municipal utility rates to increase. Limited transmission capacity in older grid equipment increases prices by creating “congestion,” w/ overloaded power lines unable to carry more electricity on account of overheating risks. This leads to using higher-cost, less efficient electricity in order to meet demand. Additionally, natural gas plants and other energy sources are trying to connect, and they experience the same sluggish & complicated interlink process that from limited capacity causes.
It’s like a two-way highway built in the 1950s, and expected to convey a modest amount of traffic, but is now forced to handle an intense rush-hour.
Data centers consumed 4% of the U.S.’s total electricity in 2023. The Dept of Energy estimates that will increase to 12% by 2028.
The tough thing is that the cost of new transmission lines & other equipment for grid upgrades falls on municipal customers. Hello, Memphis-! Its city council was bullish on Elon moving xAI to its old GE plant—even named a wing of the city council hall after him—but the council members did not exactly allow the citizenry a chance to read the fine print about xAI’s constant/seamless 24/7 needs and what havoc that would play for ordinary municipal-type utilities.
The physical infrastructure, including the resource infrastructure (water use/declining air quality), to keep the data centers like Elon’s functioning 24/7 is costly, whether in terms of fleets of generators required to patch energy holes not met by the municipal utility grid (which Elon eventually wheeled in to Memphis) or in terms of the environmental degradation which results from the running of the data center.
CEOs w/ the Magnificent 7 companies—-Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia—-have massive incentives to hype AI’s glories, especially since their valuation right now keeps the stock market bumping.
In that the tech itself might never live up to its promise, however, there’s a good chance that the Mag 7 CEOs are simultaneously delusional and conning the populace about where & why they’re spending trillions—while engaging in self-licking ice cream cone tactics: feeding each other’s bottom line, inking the governmental contracts and foisting the hoopla off on ordinary folks.
Notice that browsers like Firefox, etc. have AI searches or summaries turned on as the default.
If you type in a search phrase, like recipe for Bhagoli Polo, the AI search assist will kick out its response at the top of the page.
After that, you can manually turn off the AI feature.
But please note that your browser’s default AI agent has already tallied a score, so to speak, from your unwitting/unintentional use.
This unwitting/unintentional single *score* before the user turns off the default feature permits the AI agent favored by that browser to report 500 million users per week.
Doesn’t matter if you never intended to utilize the feature. It was forced on you.

Posted by: steel_porcupine | Sep 22 2025 13:35 utc | 12

Trump, during his visit to UK, announced vast investments in technology in UK, which means mainly, if I understand correctly, data centres to store the like of Palestinian telephone conversations for MOSSAD, consuming, as you say, vast quantities of water and electricity, no advantage to UK.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2nllgl3q7o
No doubt Brits in place, like Republicofscotland, know more than me.

Posted by: laguerre | Sep 22 2025 13:37 utc | 13

b you (and Mark Ames) are so right!
But when we try to inform all those AI-junkies who govern us regionally, nationally and even locally … they tell us how luddite we are.

Posted by: Avtonom | Sep 22 2025 13:43 utc | 14

A knowledgable friend of mine insists that what will kill mankind is not war, nor climate change, but AI.

Posted by: Avtonom | Sep 22 2025 13:45 utc | 15

….. Data centers consumed 4% of the U.S.’s total electricity in 2023. The Dept of Energy estimates that will increase to 12% by 2028……
Mind boggling

Posted by: Exile | Sep 22 2025 13:47 utc | 16

It needs a market solution. Like the early internet it’ll bubble crash and then become indispensable as long as you pay for it on the premise it gives you a return on investment.
Currently I don’t think my free use of grok has an ROI for anyone yet.

Posted by: Neofeudalfuture | Sep 22 2025 13:52 utc | 17

Related to the “tithe” b references, perhaps adjacent to it, is the fact that much of the U.S. economy is treading water, barely growing except for AI-related investments. Those require compute power, high-end software engineering, and electricity/massive sources of water for cooling — but not great masses of workers.
While it takes a lot of people to build a new data center, it takes relatively few to operate one. A paradox results: technology is driving rapid growth of industries that don’t require as much labor, resulting in a booming stock market and sluggish hiring environment.
If AI investment generates the productivity gains that its enthusiasts expect, it would be expected to generate higher real incomes over time and more prosperity. But that process of reallocating labor — moving people from the jobs available now toward those needed by an AI-for-everything future — could turn out to be extraordinarily painful.
Job creation more broadly in the U.S. has slowed down. The economy has slowed down. It’s not certain how much of the job market softness is a direct consequence of AI-driven productivity gains versus general economic weakness.
Soaring investment in AI, and the infrastructure that makes it possible, is driving economic growth and a booming invstment ecosystem — but not demand for human workers.

Posted by: steel_porcupine | Sep 22 2025 13:55 utc | 18

@ b who wrote
”
Given that most of the current ‘Artificial Intelligence’ Large Language Models (LLMs) are Garbage In, Garbage Out systems I find it difficult to justify their social costs.
”
When your form of social organization is focused on profit instead of social benefit, you get these sorts of decisions and social direction….chasing the next money maker/control tool.
The shit show continues until it doesn’t and the sooner empire crashes, the sooner the Western part of humanity has an opportunity to chose another social direction….the RoW is already moving on.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 22 2025 13:59 utc | 19

Posted by: Exile | Sep 22 2025 13:47 utc | 16
RE: mind boggling use of electricity in data centers (see #12)
<<
One of Google's data centers in the U.S. consumes one billion gallons of water per year.
What might have been useful for agricultural purposes or a city's utility customers as potable fresh water, goes up to the sky as steam once the data center has cooled its equipment.

Posted by: steel_porcupine | Sep 22 2025 14:05 utc | 20

One approach to that concern is to estimate the future cashflow associaied ro the use of AI. So what is AI going to help us with and what busineses can profit from it and what perils will it lead us into.
The basic commercial benefits go to to societies such as Asia that provide the goods to other countries.
The major political benefits go to countries that can impose monopolies on other societies like the US does.
Anyway and in most scenarios we all need to invest in the production of electrical power in ecology friendly ways.
The computer I used at the end of the sixties was a large IBM 360. I now hol in my handd a more powerful computer (a tablet) that needs far less electrical power and that can do much more than that IBM machine could do. I ezpect the Aai processors to follow a simildevelipment and to becone smaller and more energy efficient.
As for the current technology giants, they are paper tigers that will end like IBM did and eventually gecome irrelevant.
Software and the associated disciplines need the contributions of far more people than any company can afford to recruit.

Posted by: Richard L | Sep 22 2025 14:08 utc | 21

The chart being one of the first “how to lie with numbers” basic examples does not help its case – there’s a 30% increase made to look like a vertical take-off …

Posted by: pessoa | Sep 22 2025 14:12 utc | 22

@taukey | Mon, 22 Sep 2025 13:17:00 GMT | 10

Depends on a task. It’s not a problem for creative writing, for example, where outputting fiction is what you want out of LLMs.

LLM fiction is garbage. Granted, most other fiction writing is garbage too – it’s just that some people let themselves be impressed easily by, well, garbage.
No, I don’t want to read your story :/

Posted by: persiflo | Sep 22 2025 14:21 utc | 23

@15 Avtonom
Bureaucrats want all of society to think like bureaucrats think they think.

Posted by: Ornot | Sep 22 2025 14:21 utc | 24

It just so happens that ZH has a posting up with the title
Visualizing The Massive Network Powering US Data Centers
quote

Can the Grid Keep Up?
U.S. data centers already consume 2-3% of the country’s electricity. According to WRI, this could double by 2030, especially with AI workloads driving GPU server farms that are far more energy-intensive than traditional ones.
Meanwhile, the pressure is on utilities and policymakers to expand grid capacity faster than ever before. Interconnection queues are long, and power disputes are already delaying projects in places like Northern Virginia and Silicon Valley.
Yet, the demand shows no signs of slowing, making the power grid one of the most important tech battlegrounds of the next decade.

There is other good US/global info in the article and barflies are encouraged to go read it instead of clogging up this thread with more of it

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 22 2025 14:23 utc | 25

Posted by: steel_porcupine | Sep 22 2025 14:05 utc | 20
Identify a false problem, provide your solution, push your solution through your technology that creates the false problem. Not a propaganda technique at all, no siree
Q: “Climate change impact for One of Google’s data centers in the U.S. consumes one billion gallons of water per year”.
AI Answer: Data centers and climate change
Data centers are significant contributors to climate change due to their high energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuel-based electricity grids.
Studies show that these facilities are responsible for approximately 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
AI technologies are further accelerating this issue by driving increased demand for data center services and, consequently, their energy and water consumption.
The indirect water use for electricity generation for data centers is substantial. In 2023, this amounted to 211 billion gallons nationwide, dwarfing the 17 billion gallons used directly for cooling.
Water use in data centers and its contribution to water scarcity is a growing concern, with many facilities located in water-stressed regions.
Data center cooling systems can consume large quantities of water, and evaporative cooling, while energy efficient, exacerbates this problem in areas prone to drought.
Solutions
Google has made a commitment to be “water positive” by 2030, meaning they intend to return more water to communities and ecosystems than they use.
This includes using alternative water sources like treated municipal wastewater at more than 25% of their data centers.
Implementing closed-loop cooling systems and advanced cooling technologies like immersion cooling are crucial to reducing direct water consumption.
Shifting towards renewable energy sources for power generation can also significantly reduce the indirect water footprint of data centers.
Increased transparency from data center operators about their water usage is essential for policymakers and communities to make informed decisions about siting and sustainability.
Overall, addressing the climate and water impacts of data centers requires a multifaceted approach that encompasses energy efficiency, sustainable cooling technologies, renewable energy sourcing, and greater transparency in reporting.
Garbage in garbage out means AI answers to questions have the same effect as those old tech industry “misinformation” determinations.

Posted by: frithguild | Sep 22 2025 14:24 utc | 26

@Avtonom | Mon, 22 Sep 2025 13:45:00 GMT | 15

A knowledgable friend of mine insists that what will kill mankind is not war, nor climate change, but AI.

Does he know that computers have an off switch? On some older models it can be found on the back side.

Posted by: persiflo | Sep 22 2025 14:30 utc | 27

It annoys, but does not surprise, how limited people see AI use.
It is enormous and can impact all human activity.
Strategy, organization, translation (and not just into languages), monitoring (scaling), automation, and probably hundreds more which do not occur to me.
Lying in bed last night, I believe a Jetsons future is emerging in China. They are well along with flying cars. Household robots becoming common is happening slowly.
Don’t think of AI as just LLM. Think of it being able to reliably and consistently mimic human cognition (once trained) without the need for sleep, unaffected by emotions, etc.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 14:35 utc | 28

I can only imagine AI’s greatest threat is to employment. It wont win the race towards human extinction against the inevitable results of climate warming.
Is it so hard to understand that the web of life requires components that will be destroyed or simply removed due to significant changes in habitat?
If that flies over your head while sweating terminator concepts, as valid as they may be, they wont have enough time to beat the clock against climate change.
Rest assured those billionaires afloat on their islands see population as their short term threat and solution.
They think they can buy and kill their way out.
Enemies on all sides.
AI hasnt a chance in this contest.

Posted by: Not Ewe | Sep 22 2025 14:44 utc | 29

AI in the Waste is the current Tulip Bubble.
It’s gonna pop!
Energy prices in the Waste are private monopolies and cartels price fixing to cause ‘inflation’ and hence excuse interest rate increases by the private ‘National’ Bankers.
Both allow continued rent collections
They allow destruction of private personal wealth and property holding.
They enable a future Golden Billion to be mostly serfs who will ‘Never Own Anything’ ; always be in debt and still be forced to ‘be happy’.
We are led to believe we live in a ‘Garden’ – some smug simulacrum of liberal freedoms – whilst the rest of the world and the majority of humanity 90%, will live apparently in a jungle!
A jungle of endless amounts of local generated electricity.
Without massive transmission and infrastructure and ‘smart meters’ which doesn’t allow their power supply to be turned on/off and charged whatever the cartels want.
The Tyrant can not exist without having its peoples daily always worried about their food and energy and health security. Kept poor and always renting everything.
The Waste will resemble the ruins of Rome or the faded glories of later empires such as the Portuguese and Spanish within a decade.
The Tyranny has to be challenged and toppled.
Plenty of AI will be created and exist in the multipolar.
At a fraction of the cost and prices supposedly the tulip bubble purveyors have talked themselves into believing.
Hope we haven’t already forgotten about the new dams being built at the heads of the Brahmaputra? With endless freezing water and enough electricity to power Italy and France thousands of I’m away from any populations that could possibly use that electricity.

Posted by: DunGroanin | Sep 22 2025 14:44 utc | 30

electricity is the key of the money grid/greed
higher prices impact everything: transport, food, travels, housing

Posted by: Tom | Sep 22 2025 14:46 utc | 31

28 LD
Have you ever really _looked_ at what an LLM is and what it ever can be?
We attribute to AI(LLM) several feats that are actually achieved by everyday _algorithms_”
No need for any gigantic data centers. Just plain old engineering.

Posted by: Catilina | Sep 22 2025 14:51 utc | 32

*** Think of it being able to reliably and consistently mimic human cognition (once trained) without the need for sleep, unaffected by emotions, etc.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 14:35 utc | 28
The big picture question, it seems to me, is whether this will lead humanity closer to a right relationship with God (Allah). The leading indicators here are that AI provides an unimaginably vast opportunity for deception.

Posted by: frithguild | Sep 22 2025 14:51 utc | 33

AI data centers were not required for the Perot inspired electricity price gaming strategies that raped California in the late 90’s.
Energy investments by all stripes of elected officials and partisans hand in glove with military interventions, pipeline bombings and constructions, colored revolutions, paragovernment official appointments and obvious supply chain considerations all circulate around this planet destroying ambition.
Do you think these deathless weasels would not scheme ANYTHING they can come up with to jack the rates?
it is what they live for.
planetary vampires obsessed with vast fortunes.
they deserve what we have coming.

Posted by: Not Ewe | Sep 22 2025 14:53 utc | 34

thanks for pointing this out b… i like what @ psychohistorian | Sep 22 2025 13:59 utc | 19 says –
“When your form of social organization is focused on profit instead of social benefit, you get these sorts of decisions and social direction.”

Posted by: james | Sep 22 2025 14:54 utc | 35

Residential electricity cost is rocketing up. During this same time, residential natural gas cost is flat.
Kids, the cost rise isn’t due to fuel cost rise, as we see. And it isn’t due to a bit of AI center construction, although the Blob has led you there, obviously. Now, what could it be? And why does the Blob keep that answer out of the AI you worship?

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 14:55 utc | 36

@ LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 14:35 utc | 28 who is ignorant or otherwise delusional about the potential of the current AI craze.
Yes, it has value but that value is limited to what humans know which is almost 5% of the universe and otherwise we are bat shit stoopid….we hubristically think of ourselves as so advanced when we are barely above animals.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 22 2025 14:55 utc | 37

Posted by: LoveDumbass | Sep 22 2025 14:35 utc | 28
With all due respect, you don’t know what you are talking about.
My son is a senior programmer at a major insurance firm. He tells me that EVERY AI program has to be debugged-in 2 years not one AI generated program was without error. He is lobbying the CEO stop using AI as it costs more time and is chronically wrong.
I went to chatGPT to ask what return (compounded annually) gold has had from $35/oz to $3,500 an ounce over 54 years-it told me 6.42%
My son did the calculation and it is 8.26% per cent-he told me that chat didn’t use the proper formula.
So, like usual, you are seriously misinformed.

Posted by: canuk | Sep 22 2025 14:56 utc | 38

AI is Artificial Idiocy.
But the fact that electricity prices skyrockets is not a bug, its a feature.
“Under My Plan … Electricity Rates Would NECESSARILY SKYROCKET.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSZ62xiD4M

Posted by: Norwegian | Sep 22 2025 15:00 utc | 39

“And I would like to ad Con Ed in NYC has a monopoly on the grid and that is why they can charge such ridiculous prices!
“Posted by: Fortuan | Sep 22 2025 12:21 utc | 2”
Yeah but Con Ed have always had a monopoly in NYC, for as long as I can remember

Posted by: Barofsky | Sep 22 2025 15:01 utc | 40

Posted by: canuk | Sep 22 2025 14:56 utc | 38
Garbage in, garbage out

Posted by: Barofsky | Sep 22 2025 15:04 utc | 41

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 14:55 utc | 36
If you had the slightest c1ue what you were talking about someone might ask you

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 22 2025 15:06 utc | 42

Posted by: frithguild | Sep 22 2025 14:24 utc | 26
RE: was the juice worth the squeeze-?
<<
Not ragging on you, man—but was it necessary to ask Google's AI agent about 'water positivity' practices in Google's data centers in order to generate a parlor trick of a response-?
Not only did you 'feed' the hype: !-500 million users each week-!
But you also burned electricity in generating the query.
When the tray of cocktail peanuts & pretzels finds its way to your corner of the bar, it will probably be empty.

Posted by: steel_porcupine | Sep 22 2025 15:07 utc | 43

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/whats-happening-to-wholesale-electricity

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 22 2025 15:08 utc | 44

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/whats-happening-to-wholesale-electricity

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 22 2025 15:08 utc | 45

Posted by: Catilina | Sep 22 2025 14:51 utc | 32
######
The phenomenon is what is important, not the packaging.
Most do not understand the notion of engineering, never having the opportunity or capacity to plan and then execute.
It is not taught in schools, even to the children of the elites.
Brawno civilization.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 15:08 utc | 46

Posted by: canuk | Sep 22 2025 14:56 utc | 38
######
What is more likely?
I am into something, or that your son takes after his father.
🤔

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 15:10 utc | 47

Posted by: frithguild | Sep 22 2025 14:51 utc | 33
######
Humanity has no choice. Allah is everywhere at all times.
All roads lead back to the creator.
Every human action and creation is from Allah AWJ. If there is alien life, that too is from Allah. There are no exceptions.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 15:12 utc | 48

The computer I used at the end of the sixties was a large IBM 360. I now hold in my hand a more powerful computer (a tablet) that needs far less electrical power and that can do much more than that IBM machine could do.
Posted by: Richard L | Sep 22 2025 14:08 utc | 21
Yet today computers as a whole use more energy than back then.
Rebound effect (Jevons paradox): cars with better mileage result in people drive more and faster, offsetting gasoline savings.
The same applies to computers: give someone a more powerful computer, and programs will be sloppier written, offsetting performance gains. A programmer stops thinking when the program is “fast enough”.

Posted by: Passerby | Sep 22 2025 15:12 utc | 49

The article was too long to read but I searched and could not find any mention in it of sanctions against Russia or the war in Ukraine. Those might explain the timing of the increase that started at the start of 2022.

Posted by: Brendan | Sep 22 2025 15:15 utc | 50

There are at least 2 other fun things you can do with that much ‘AI’ hardware:
1) Guess crypto keys
2) Mine coins
Whither CJ Hopkins?

Posted by: Dr Wellington Yueh | Sep 22 2025 15:16 utc | 51

To be fair, humans are largely garbage in, garbage out systems.

Posted by: Skiffer | Sep 22 2025 15:17 utc | 52

See the reply by @FabiusMaximus01 to Mark Ames’s tweet. AI development is a tiny part of electricity use in the USA. as elsewhere. What makes a billionaire a trillionaire is not AI (there’s no profit in it) but clever speculation – betting on tomorrow’s “winners” yesterday – and getting out before the bubble bursts.

Posted by: geoff chambers | Sep 22 2025 15:19 utc | 53

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 22 2025 14:55 utc | 37
######
I’ll do you better, we are so dumb, we are incapable of realizing how much we don’t know.
Understanding the boundaries of knowledge available to us would indicate a high level of introspection.
The average punter is an idiot.
You’re a bit myopic. I see potential and possibilities. Maybe none of it is realized, but my perspective is optimistic and hopeful.
That said, can you refute any of my examples or claims?
Or is this just another reflexively mindless, “AI is a waste” commentary?
Don’t believe me. I am no one. Watch and listen to the Chinese. See where AI is tangibly going today.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 15:19 utc | 54

@Passerby | Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:12:00 GMT | 49

give someone a more powerful computer, and programs will be sloppier written, offsetting performance gains. A programmer stops thinking when the program is “fast enough”.

While this is obviously true now, it is still not a law of nature. I think we are doing good to try and inject some reason into the debate.

Posted by: persiflo | Sep 22 2025 15:20 utc | 55

Posted by: Dr Wellington Yueh | Sep 22 2025 15:16 utc | 51
######
Traitor!
“A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!”

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 15:22 utc | 56

@Dr Wellington Yueh | Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:16:00 GMT | 51

There are at least 2 other fun things you can do with that much ‘AI’ hardware:
1) Guess crypto keys
2) Mine coins

c1ue has stated this is not really true due to grafik chips not being general purpose processors. The post is in the last AI thread from a couple of days ago.

Posted by: persiflo | Sep 22 2025 15:22 utc | 57

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 22 2025 15:06 utc | 42
.
.
Another bolshie troll, shitting up the comments.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 15:26 utc | 58

My next door neighbor is engineering VP of a telecom company that builds data centers in Canada. Even in Northern Ontario and Quebec they are having trouble getting enough power to run them. They’ve been supplementing their power needs with gas fuelled generator sets. He says the problem is with the latest servers using advanced chipsets … they’re extremely powerful and efficient compute wise but they require ridiculous cooling. This is relatively energy rich Canada where we can still build dams … there isn’t enough capacity for both humans and AI … I can’t imagine what they have to do in drought striken SW USA.
What China did was build the power plants and the grid first THEN roll out AI, mag lev trains and EV’s. They started building for this 40 years ago. we do it ass backwards … cause the demand then scramble about trying to make it all work.
I understand how they’re commies and successful economies are run by rugged individuals with vision, supply and demand and guns and stock markets that rise forever however can’t we plan just a little bit?

Posted by: HB_Norica | Sep 22 2025 15:32 utc | 59

If you ask IA, you get Manistream answers. But if you do a specified targeted research, you would get results you could never obtain with a normal Google research. Especially Grok works fine with this and you can alway refine you resarch. Perplexity answers superficially, ChatGPT has a blooming phantasy and does estimale calcuation results with a failure of up to x 10. And deep seek answers according to the region you live in. So the reseach aspect I would not like to miss.

Posted by: Johann von Oberndorf | Sep 22 2025 15:34 utc | 60

It would be Socialism in its purest and most unacceptable form in America to introduce a lower basic rate for the amount of electricity to run a family household and another higher one for commercial purposes and another even higher one for AI use.
Because in the system that is in place, everything is a tradeable commodity: utilities, fresh water, breathable air, education, healthcare, public safety and even justice are all up for sale to the highest bidder.

Posted by: Noam A. Larkey | Sep 22 2025 15:38 utc | 61

As some in the X thread have pointed out a significant part the nominal price increase is a result of dollar devaluation (inflation) and the higher costs of bringing new sources on stream and upgrading the grid.

Posted by: Fool Me Twice | Sep 22 2025 15:39 utc | 62

Humanity has no choice. Allah is everywhere at all times.
All roads lead back to the creator.
Every human action and creation is from Allah AWJ. If there is alien life, that too is from Allah. There are no exceptions.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 15:12 utc | 48
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This is also my guess. But we have to define what or who Allah is.

Posted by: Johann von Oberndorf | Sep 22 2025 15:41 utc | 63

Another bolshie troll, shitting up the comments.
Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 15:26 utc | 58
Another geezer toothless tough guy spewing spittle and bullshit behind a keyboard.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 22 2025 15:43 utc | 64

This is where the natural negative tendency of leftists becomes readily apparent.
While many progressives claim to be forward thinking, this thread itself demonstrates the lie.
Let me explain the real situation:
1 the USA needs a Manhattan type of national infrastructure project
2 the electrical grid is an obvious natural choice
3 the need for drastically increased generation will rationalize nuclear power as ‘renewables’ are exposed as a fraud, and fossil fuels become too costly
Summary: the real plan is to implement a national infrastructure project. A build out of nuclear generation with vastly bulked up transmission capability is the solution.
AI is the retail message for the regular cast of losers and dupes. Hope this helps.

Posted by: Markw | Sep 22 2025 15:44 utc | 65

“current technology giants…will end like IBM did…” Richard L 21
Not sure about this prediction, “software-firms” commonly referred to as Tech-companies are much more like law firms than true technology firms. Their ability to preserve themselves relies on legal entitlements, law-fare et al. Copyright is the bludgeon, not patents. And when patents are employed it’s used to prevent a competitor breaking into a monopolist’s market.
After the copyright extension act 1998, a copyright will last 95 years, a patent 20 years.
Consider, a software-team takes a well-known procedure/formula and types it into code and successfully compiles it, they own that code for 95 years; God help them if their code is has parts of it that line up with some other clown who did the same thing ten years ago…they’ll be sued. Go find your own monopoly they’ll be told.
Consider on the other hand, a group of scientists, engineers, technicians and highly-skilled tradespeople work together to successfully build a “fusion-generator”, a unit that fits in a 40′ container and delivers electrical power directly, without using turbines. Quite an accomplishment for them, a gigantic leap for mankind and yet, they have to commercialize the thing then get that by Government regulators [minimum of 3+10 years] and bring it to market [minimum of five years]. They’ll never break even before the patent expires.
Meanwhile the typing monkeys who had to invest minimal time and capital are through their IPO and living large; they’ve invested less than a year before getting get to sit back for 94 years under USG protection. No doubt they’ll spend those 94 under government protection preaching the minimal government philosophy of neoliberalism and libertarianism. Yes, we’ve all seen this shit before, a well financed rich kid gets richer with “borrowed-software” and his daddy’s lawyers.

Posted by: S Brennan | Sep 22 2025 15:44 utc | 66

grafik chips not being general purpose processors.
Posted by: persiflo | Sep 22 2025 15:22 utc | 57
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The computational power is usually quoted in FLOPS. Floating Point Operations Per Second.
For AI processors the floating point scalar is FP4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minifloat#4_bit_(1.2.1)
So the tensors of LLM models are represented with crap precision, with the idea that the quantity of tensors is more important than their quality.

Posted by: too scents | Sep 22 2025 15:45 utc | 67

All roads lead back to the creator.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 15:12 utc | 48
May all make straight the paths. Yet, when I look at the AI answer to the question, “Will AI lead humanity closer to a right relationship with God (Allah)?” what I see is a rhetorical firebag that encircles believers. I am not black pilled on this. I am just seeing a very difficult fight against new opportunities for deception.

Posted by: frithguild | Sep 22 2025 15:47 utc | 68

@persiflo #57 re: unsuitablility, not true at all. It’s a heterogeneous forest of hardware, and already requires software to be adaptable. The inverse is actually true: the graphics make use of the spectacular vector capability…which is far more important for bigger compute problems.

Posted by: Dr Wellington Yueh | Sep 22 2025 15:53 utc | 69

Posted by: persiflo | Sep 22 2025 15:20 utc | 55
About 4 billion devices run Android. A delay of just half a second, introduced globally, collectively wastes more than 60 years of human time — the length of an average human life.
There are 5 billion internet users. Suppose every user clicks a pop-up “yes, agree” once a day, and needs 2 seconds to do so. That’s 4 human lives of 75 years each, wasted. Every day.

Posted by: Passerby | Sep 22 2025 15:53 utc | 70

@ seer | Sep 22 2025 12:43 utc | 6
Your perspective is out of date. Starting in 2014, Lazard, one of the oldest and most respected houses in london, determined that utility grade solar is the least expensive form power generation. It’s called the levelized cost of power: https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2025.pdf

Posted by: bryan | Sep 22 2025 15:57 utc | 71

sweet and concise. Great work, b

Posted by: Scottindallas | Sep 22 2025 15:59 utc | 72

I dont want to get OT, but a brief reminder of whats at stake can serve to correctly interpret various trends and movements.
First, one must recognize the West (USA/EU) lost not only the battle of Ukraine, but the overall war against the East.
Now, place yourself in leadership. History isnt static, the wheel always turns. What policies would you implement to restore Western power, if not dominance?
Well, this where its actually very easy, as the weaknesses that caused us to reach this point have been endlessly discussed and dissected.
1 the debt overhang problem must be resolved. I say a one half to two thirds default is in the offing.
2 the tech gap must be closed; that means not playing catch up to current standards must leapfrogging to the next
3 we are well past peak FF – the obvious answer and solution is nuke power. This fits in well with future infrastructure and productivity
4 the social problems must be addressed. Democracy as proven over and over again is easily manipulated by an internal/external coordinated force
The overall solution, so obvious in its face, is the embrace of similar national solidarity policies as that of our primary rivals, Russia and China
If we dont change/adapt, we lose. If we do, we can/might come back. Stuff like AI – and other major investment programs – are the vehicles by which we may feel and stumble our way into future unkowns.
Always assuming a negative, contrary POV just renders you an outsider. Maybe its a legacy of fighting western systems and values. Perhaps it might comfort you that the West indeed lost, and now its a wide open future with endless opportunities.

Posted by: Markw | Sep 22 2025 16:08 utc | 73

Posted by: bryan | Sep 22 2025 15:57 utc | 71
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Sorry, but I engineer projects within the utility industry, and work with those who are more knowledgeable and trustworthy than your buds in The City, Blob employees no doubt. These costs are well understood, and the recent price increases coincide with the mass deployment of capital to inferior means of electricity production which your buds shill.
The flat natural gas costs over the same time frame are the dead giveaway.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 16:11 utc | 74

My testimony: California, which has in all aspects become a hard right wing dystopian shit hole, has the highest priced electricity in the entire country. The provider, PGE is a profit making mafia which is allowed to blow up, burn down entire cities with impunity as it’s only regulator is the PUC in San Francisco, which like everything else here is wholly dominated by the Imperialist, genocidal, Zionist Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, the state of California has the highest concentration of billionaires in the entire US and very likely most of the world. It also has a poverty rate, artificially lowered by bourgeois statisticians, which nonetheless rivals that of Louisiana!
They say you know revolution is near when it becomes universally accepted that things cannot continue on as they have before. If there was any meaningful anti billionaire, anti Imperialist organization of the tens of billions of working Californians, the situation would radically change overnight. It carries on through nothing more that enforced ignorance, police state methods and initeria.
It is a pillar of salt to be kicked down!

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 22 2025 16:12 utc | 75

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 22 2025 15:43 utc | 64
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Be gone, bolshie troll.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 16:13 utc | 76

“AI” is language abuse and will be as useful to dump the thing that it was to make it adopt. There is much more to modern computing than freaking chatbots.
LMMs are a part of modern computing but not all of it. It’s power usage is outrageous regarding the services it deliver ; the general public is mostly using it as a “fashioned enhanced search engine” and sometime as translator.
“AI” is that fashioned toy than is scarce just before Christmas. For now.
The real useful usage are yet to come and not mature with actual technology (think at autonomous driving).
The energy “prices” in the US have a lot of causes. Taxes, Electric cars, “green energy”, grid investments are some of it. Energy scarcity is not real at production level with prices relatively constants during the decade (except during DOVID and the first month of SMO , gas price now are a problem in the EU and particularly in Germany but hey : YOU the GERMANS requested and electricity price indexed on gaz price just to FUCK THE FRENCHS nuclear energy : now everyone pays for YOUR stupidity …Deal with it and burn moar of that brown coal you loved if you dare pay the carbon tax !!)
The only problems US has with datacenters is the political obsession of keeping most of the “high tech” in the US… without the grid for it and stoooopid implementations constraint.

Posted by: Savonarole | Sep 22 2025 16:19 utc | 77

Sorry, but I engineer projects within the utility industry
Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 16:11 utc | 74
—
How is the transformer availability in your area?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/transformer-shortage

Posted by: too scents | Sep 22 2025 16:19 utc | 78

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 16:13 utc | 76
#######
Stop posting.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 16:27 utc | 79

Look closer at whom owns the New England AND New York State electric grids(and a large swath of USA military housing)…they are in the City of London.

Posted by: Ering46z | Sep 22 2025 16:32 utc | 80

But if you use chatGPT as an advanced search tool it can be usefull…
But I agree, we could live without it

Posted by: vargas | Sep 22 2025 16:35 utc | 81

The flat natural gas costs over the same time frame are the dead giveaway.
Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 16:11 utc | 74
The only thing flat is your head.
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion
Speaking of the Borg/blob. Bolshie socialism for the corporate elite.
https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/subsidy-gusher-taxpayers-stuck-with-massive-subsidies-while-oil-and-gas-pro/

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 22 2025 16:38 utc | 82

There is a silver lining… Less satoshis will be mined in the United States! In addition to anywhere else that chooses this path

Posted by: L | Sep 22 2025 16:51 utc | 83

AI is the latest psyop to sucker a brain dead nation.

Posted by: nook | Sep 22 2025 17:03 utc | 84

HB norica 59, interesting local tidbit, thanks!

Posted by: L | Sep 22 2025 17:16 utc | 85

AI is the latest psyop to sucker a brain dead nation.
Posted by: nook | Sep 22 2025 17:03 utc | 84
########
Luckily, the Chinese (who are not brain dead) are driving that bus.
Americans, many of whom struggle to conceptualize the ROW, like to believe that AI is their baby, and that the limits will be defined in Tel Aviv.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 17:18 utc | 86

IMO Optical networks, programming and processing using optical circuits, implemented in simulated systems (mainly software) are replacing the energy sucking electronic digital circuits. Light especially light that takes advantage of photoelectric multiplication will soon replace or minimize traditional and maybe obsolete the many data centers being built in traditional silicon.. The Photonic chips, as compared to the best digital alternatives are 100 x or better faster that the best digital alternatives. We are moving from electronic signalling in hardware to optical signaling in optical cells using non metallic parts the amplify and multiply the signals. I think the power companies know it that is why they want expensive data centers using traditional technology built because optical is going to significantly reduce power demands
We are talking replacing the most of the hardware that uses Silicon with software that emulates the hardware and permits the processing to be done in optical cells arranged as switches and networks.

Posted by: snake | Sep 22 2025 17:20 utc | 87

>>> “AI is the latest psyop to sucker a brain dead nation.” <<<
Posted by: nook | Sep 22 2025 17:03 utc | 84
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This. AI, The Plandemic, the Blob has endless scams to confuse the sheeple.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 17:29 utc | 88

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 22 2025 16:38 utc | 82
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Do yourself a favor, and keep my name out of your garbage posts, bolshie troll.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 17:32 utc | 89

The current plan is to create a lot of new data centres and the necessary power infrastructures. But what if new computing architectures arise in the near future that can do the same at a fraction of the current power requirements. We could expect this to happen in a normal market, but in a market where NVIDIA has 100 billion available to invest in its main customer, then that customer will certainly not look for alternatives.

Posted by: hubert | Sep 22 2025 17:32 utc | 90

>>> “How is the transformer availability in your area?” <<<
Posted by: too scents | Sep 22 2025 16:19 utc | 78
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Transformers are always a long lead item. The hedgies and banksters try mightily to get control of those markets, mind, to get a skim, but proper schedulingng fucks them off. Outages in this area are mostly due to weather, rarely eqpt.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 17:38 utc | 91

Posted by: hubert | Sep 22 2025 17:32 utc | 90
#########
That is the next step in China’s approach.
First they establish the technology, then they scale it, then they improve efficiency.
Huawei Ascend chips are already as good as nVidia designs for AI .I don’t know how they stack up when it comes to “inference” and “training”.
The Chinese approach is private, whereas the US approach is financialized and bureaucratic..
I cannot speak highly enough of how much better China is for rejecting American corporate socialism.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 17:41 utc | 92

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 22 2025 16:27 utc | 79
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You too can leave my name out of your endlessly spurting diarrhea posts, bolshie troll. Especially you.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 17:42 utc | 93

@Snake, re: optical digital processing: Do you have any favorite links, research papers, commercialization instances etc. you can point us to?
Thanks for bringing up the subject.
===
In addition to being faster, I believe optical processors don’t generate nearly the heat that silicon semiconductors do. The reason data centers use so much energy is that 99.5% of energy-in is exhausted-out as heat. Also, the reason some data centers (certainly not all) use water is for evaporative cooling.
You can use a heat pump instead of water to cool the data center.

Posted by: Tom Pfotzer | Sep 22 2025 17:51 utc | 94

The AIs are far from GIGO.
Check out sections 10 thru 13 in https://a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2025/09/14/the-ai-question-thoughts-musings .
As for the AIs consuming power like there’s no tomorrow, that’s true. See Section 19 in the same article.

Posted by: Kersie | Sep 22 2025 17:52 utc | 95

Posted by: Tom Pfotzer | Sep 22 2025 17:51 utc | 94
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They can use water in a closed loop system, with no evaporation required, just like your car.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 17:57 utc | 96

I’m chuckling at this AI/Electricity red herring the Blob has dreamed up here. It’s minor, and doesn’t compare to the electricity demands of reshored iron/steel/copper/aluminum industries, which these tariffs are designed to bring on.

Posted by: seer | Sep 22 2025 18:04 utc | 97

A farmer now has the choice: plant wheat or put solar panels.
That means one person’s electric car competes with another person’s bread.

Posted by: Passerby | Sep 22 2025 18:23 utc | 98

@Passerby | Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:53:00 GMT | 70

There are 5 billion internet users. Suppose every user clicks a pop-up “yes, agree” once a day, and needs 2 seconds to do so. That’s 4 human lives of 75 years each, wasted. Every day.

MoA, do you know what drove the apparently insane decision to make the original USB-A/B connectors incongruent under rotation? … a round on me if you do. I’ve been wondering forever.

Posted by: persiflo | Sep 22 2025 18:27 utc | 99

seer | Sep 22 2025 18:04 utc | 97–
None of those industries are coming back to the Outlaw US Empire.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 22 2025 18:32 utc | 100

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