Back in 2016, Marco Gutiérrez, the Mexican-born founder of Latinos for Trump, issued an ominous warning to the US. “My culture is a very dominant culture,” he said on MSNBC. “It is imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”
A decade later, I regret to inform you there is not a taco truck on every corner. But I am here to issue my own ominous warning about the takeover of America: not by immigrant culture but by AI culture. To echo Gutiérrez: it is imposing and it’s causing problems. And if we don’t do something about it, we’re going to have datacenters on every corner.
I’m not some sort of data-hater, OK? Datacenters – physical facilities housing storage systems, servers and network devices – are a critical part of powering the internet; if they disappeared, the modern world would cease to function. The banking system would collapse; you wouldn’t be able to stream Netflix, go on social media, or (most importantly) read the Guardian online.
But while we obviously need datacenters, the AI boom, and the enormous amounts of computing power it requires, has caused their footprint to massively expand – and our utility bills to jump. “When a data center comes online, retail customers usually help to foot the electric bill: American utilities sought almost thirty billion dollars in retail rate increases in the first half of 2025,” the New Yorker explained last year. Meanwhile Bloomberg reported on a new study this week that shows “power prices on the largest electric grid in the US jumped 76% in the first quarter due to rampant demand from data centers.” Things will only get worse. Today datacenters consume 6% of electricity supply in the UK and US; by 2030, they could account for more than 14% of the US’s total power demand.
It’s not just how much they cost that’s problematic. AI datacenters are noisy, emit pollution that could harm community health and divert much-needed resources. Last year, for example, residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed low water pressure; eventually they discovered a nearby datacenter had taken 30m gallons of water, initially without paying for it. It is no surprise that a new Gallup poll has found seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing AI datacenters in their local area. Indeed, most Americans would rather live by a nuclear power plant than a datacenter.
Of course, the people getting filthy rich from AI will never have to live nextdoor to their moneymaking creations and seem fairly blase about the issues associated with their expansion. Take the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, for example. “As AI grows, how big do data centers need to be?” podcaster Theo Von asked Altman last year. “Is that a concern of you guys?”
Not really, judging by his response. Altman waxed lyrical about the scale of the datacenter OpenAI was building before saying that while he wasn’t sure where things were going, he had a…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]
