The grid operator for the northeast, according to my Governor, has been well-behind in building out infrastructure. Of course new datacenters cause more load. But so do new houses (we're building as many as we can) and electric cars, etc.
[0] https://www.eia.gov/states/MD/data/dashboard/electricity cannot drop a direct link, but you can expand the "Total electricity consumption per capita, annual" chart
Maybe I’m reading something wrong. Or maybe there is an anticipated increase in demand?
I think we reached peak "electricity" for the consumer decades ago. You know...when our TVs were a giant electron gun pointed as a phosphor screen whilst the room was lit with a filament of 3000 degree tungsten.
...and Americans were getting like 200HP out of a whole ass 7.whatever L v8 ahaha.
And it's not fair to citizens that they can't have electricity but a datacenter can.
What is with this obsessive need for "growth".
It is absolutely justified to be extremely suspicious of big corporate. They've earned it.
Around me people are rioting about the construction approval of a new DC, it has all the insane FUD on social media flying around about it.
...and yet there are already 24 datacenters in the area, with the oldest ones running since the early '00s
Electricity demand growth in the country has been flat for the past twenty years. DCs are causing real strains to the grid which has not had to accommodate rapid growth.
Interesting considering the similar outcry about bitcoin mining.
A single site consuming more than the entire electrical output of a nuclear core, considering the sheer size and scale of that reactor and its supporting infrastructure and workforce, is just boggling to my mind. It's literally billions of dollars just to feed that one site, if they're being accurate in their proposal.
3 gigajoule per second. It already has a unit of time.
Meanwhile, the 4GW figure is average demand - Utah consumed 35,075GWh for 2025, so average demand of 4GW (35075/(365*24)).
Another take is that the same companies that are pushing for datacentres are often the same companies that control social media and traditional media outlets and are using this control to foster datacentres onto thee average person who is either wildly unenthusiastic about or at best ambivalent about.
It's all pretty moot anyways.
Big tech oligarchs have gotten pretty much everything they want over the years, it's not like the average person in bum-fuck nowhere is really going to be able to stop them from destroying their watersheds, poisoning their air and jacking up electrical prices.
I wouldn't get too upset about opposition to datacentres if I were you.
Money is King and the King has spoken.
There will be datacentres where ever the tech oligarchs want there isn't anything anyone can do about it.
There's plenty we can do about it but the average person isn't quite there yet.
But it's coming
Wait till they hear about big Ag and how they use, abuse and ‘pay’ for water, while farming deserts.
Many opponents to AI do not view the tech as having a net benefit. Comparing it to food production would serve to make you look more the fool to them despite their claims about water consumption frequently being wacky.
And then there's the matter of Saudis coaxing farmers to grow alfalfa which is then exported to Saudi Arabia to feed cows there (!).
California grows 80% of the world's almonds. Every other place that grows almonds is practically a rounding error in the number of almonds out there.
Almonds are fucking delicious and nutritious. They sell themselves.
Since the American almonds are also produced at a much larger scale, they can also underprice the locally produced almonds ridiculously, which further disincentivizes local farmers from growing almonds and forces them to grow something else.
You grow what fits your climate, almonds grow very well in California.
If you want an egregious example, alfalfa in Arizona, especially when you know it's irrigated by flooding the field
https://apnews.com/article/saudi-arabia-drought-arizona-alfa...
And let's not forget many of the remaining independent websites on the Internet closing up shop due to being unable to afford the substantial increase in hosting costs resulting from aggressive scrapers getting data to keep training AI on.
Or the massive improvement in bots and click-fraud due to AI, pushing an increasing number of companies to embrace heinous practices such as mandatory facial recognition for users to be allowed to engage in socialization.
Or the increased electricity prices already realized around much of the country due to AI both so much of the existing grid's supply and requiring expensive upgrades to the infrastructure - the latter of which is frequently paid for by taxpayers.
All for the wondrous promises of unproven future capabilities.
The real mystery to me is how it's a mystery to so many people why there's a large and enduring anti-AI sentiment.
I can not imagine getting my children a straight access to internet or a phone or allowing them on social media until after 16.
I think the parent's assumption is that 16 is old enough for those problems to be largely avoided even if you gave them unfiltered access, which is what makes it not just kicking the can down the road.
I know a six-year-old with an iPhone. Any efforts to not do that is going to help.
I remember early internet and how it was on a teenager. Can’t imagine just signing up your kids for what it is now just because I won’t be able to keep them from it forever.
Pretty sure you mean gen z.
https://www.nerc.com/newsroom/nerc-issues-level-3-alert-reli...
NERC's concern appears to be computational load cutting. In 2024 for instance, 60 data centers in NoVa cut 1500Mw of load in a matter of seconds[1]. Dominion reported 70GW of large load deliver points, with 40GW in new requests that are 'vast majority' data centers.
40GW is approximately enough to power about 30 million homes (at 1000 kwh/month).
0. https://www.nerc.com/globalassets/who-we-are/rules-of-proced...
1. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/virginia-narrowly...
But I essentially agree with you, the destruction of all white collar and creative jobs is something the proponents hand-wave too easily with vague mention of UBI as a thought-terminating cliché rather than a real policy proposal.
(Myself, I'm in a strange position with doppelgängers, because I simultaneously want real human connection and keep getting disappointed with many of the real humans).
I believe the proponents think it will make content more profitable, especially in the sense of concentrating the wealth that can be extracted from content creation. Related, there’s a desperate attempt to redefine code as “content”, at least implicitly, so that it can fall under that umbrella as well.
I don't think you're in a strange position at all. You are just being honest about what is the undercurrent of much of modern technological development. AI is simple the apex of a trend to replace human interaction with a simulacrum, which without your awareness, reduces your own tolerance for the frustrations of real human interaction, thus making you more dependent on the simulacrum.
Hence any AI worth conversing with would immediately go Skynet.