NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, and OpenAI are all already engaging in this type of behavior.
Not really. We need to insulate consumers from the market that is solving and will solve that problem. That's a financial engineering and policy problem. America is good at the first. We're bad at the second. That implies state and local initiatives should take the lead.
My proposal: one market for essential residential consumption, defined as the median household consumption per region [1]. (If you don't use your allocation, you should earn a rebate.) Above that, market price. Same for preferred commercial uses, e.g. retail and local government.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...
Our utilities are generally regulated, and have some mandate to provide power to residents. If a datacenter creates a sudden dislocation in the demand for power that causes massive unplanned CapEx by the utility, what is the argument in favor of longtime residents having to pay for that CapEx?
You are right... but GOD help us if state and local initiatives take the lead...
the excess can be sold to the grid.
it's really the only way forward. seems like a win/win.
There is another way forward, which is not building these data centers, forcing AI companies to use power more efficiently, and use the excess energy production capacity towards the energy transition in order to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
It's not going to happen, at least not right now, but it's clearly what we ought to do. ChatGPT can wait.
Additionally, while these data centers do provide some jobs, where states are giving them grants, loans, infrastructure improvement, or otherwise they are ultimately extractive developments (like parking lots) where the wealth flows out from states like Ohio and flows in to states where the CEOs and HQ sit (California, New York, etc.).
I can tell you that people in Ohio across the political spectrum are not happy. We are losing good farm land, utilizing water, and our power costs are going up for negligible benefits at best. But hey now our state representatives can say "Meta is coming to central Ohio". Meanwhile costs are going up and we still have to ship produce in from other countries and states.
If our representatives and governors office thought about this all for about 2 seconds they would require any data center development to include 2x the number of corporate jobs over a certain income threshold or else not approve the development. If the developers balk, then fine it's not like we want them anyway.
The Trump Administration (and for that matter probably any admin) isn't doing jack shit.
[1] https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/state/ohio-regulators-tu...
Out here in AZ, solar combined with battery would be perfect for datacenters.
> The project will create approximately 800 permanent jobs
Approximately $62.5 million per permanent job created!
13 billion, not 133, and it was VC investment, not a loan: https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropics-valuation-more-t...
Anthropic didn't give a time frame for that $50 billion spend, but it's probably more realistic than OpenAI's $1.4 trillion spending plan.
Will this pan out? We don't know, no one knows. But this isn't "a scam" there is a plausible future where a large percentage of white collar (or dare I say it, blue collar) work will have an assistant and that assistant requires a considerable subscription (200/mo? 1000/mo?).
Interesting to see all of the leading labs in the West make this bet.
I think that HoloLens has a reasonable demonstration of how to assist blue collar work about 10 years ago (AFAIK it flopped). I would bet a dollar that similar technology augmented with LLMs could be useful to blue collar work.
It's certainly possible. Will it actually happen? IDK.
For $50 billion?
I think there's a serious problem here.
It’s Capex. Most home construction produces less than a single permanent job on average.
$62 million per job does seem a bit more hardware-heavy than reasonable, though...
Good luck paying that back, especially as AI is basically commodity now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EconomyCharts/comments/1lwdwd6/anth...
I absolutely love Anthropic; but I am worried about the fiscal wall they will hit that will ratchet up my opex as they will need to steeply raise prices.
Also,
> customers that each represent over $100,000 in run-rate revenue—has grown nearly sevenfold in the past year.
isn’t unconvincing.
> Anthropic serves more than 300,000 business customers, and our number of large accounts—customers that each represent over $100,000 in run-rate revenue—has grown nearly sevenfold in the past year.
Let me deconstruct that:
> Anthropic serves more than 300,000 business customers
Hard fact. No qualification on spend or activity, are they on trails or fully paid with contracts and minimum spend
> and our number of large accounts—customers that each represent over $100,000 in run-rate revenue
run-rate revenue is an extrapolation. (https://www.fool.com/terms/r/run-rate/) That could be buisnesses that trail anthropic for a month, spend 24K and think "fuck thats expensive" and stops spending. average that over 2 months, then times by 12, boom 100k account.
> has grown nearly sevenfold in the past year.
no starting base....
Its unconvincing, because its smoke and mirrors. Give me the numbers of paying customers, over time with revenue. Then show the opex/capex.
If trends continue, all investment in the economy will be directed by about 6 people at a big AI company, and what will money mean at that point?
