This is the script of my national radio report yesterday discussing how AI data centers are damaging communities, and now are damaging everyone who buys computers by massively driving up the cost of a critical component. As always, there may have been minor wording variations from this script as I presented this report live on air.
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Well, we've talked before about the flood of massive new data centers being built around the country, that many communities are pushing back against now -- data centers mostly to support AI services that nobody asked for and most people don't want. And we continue to see new pushes by those Big Tech Billionaire CEOs and their politician supporters to force AI into everybody's lives in every possible way no matter how much damage they do.
It was just announced that Apple is going to use Google's Gemini AI models for Siri. Google itself is rolling out a pile of Gemini AI features in Gmail to "scour" -- that's the word I saw them use -- your email in ways that personally I'd recommend you refuse and disable when they're offered to you. Don't click that horrific little four pointed star when it shows up that says "Try Gemini" when you hover over it!
Oh and by the way, Google AI Overviews, which are so prone to wrong answers and misinformation, were found to be spewing incorrect and potentially dangerous answers to important medical question searches and Google had to back those off very recently after an outcry. Oh yeah, and OpenAI wants you to feed your personal medical records into a health-oriented version of ChatGPT. What could go wrong, huh?
My recommendation for now is Just Say No to all this AI Slop. These giant AI data centers can ruin areas wherever they're built -- often originally pristine rural areas. They suck up massive amounts of electricity and can push electric rates up for everyone in the region. They can slurp up massive amounts of water for cooling and make existing water prices and water shortages worse. They can cause noise and air pollution from generators, and word now is that many want their own little nuclear reactors for power with the obvious issues of dealing with the waste and potential terrorism.
But now Big Tech has found a way to cost us more money even if you don't live ANYWHERE near a data center! The crush of so many new gigantic data centers is causing the supply to virtually collapse of a critical computer component, used in one form or another by all computers and computing systems, pushing up prices enormously. This component is DRAM, Dynamic Random Access Memory. This isn't like sdcards or other forms of memory that maintain their data without power. The amount of DRAM on a system is one of the basic specifications, today often 4 gigabytes or 8 or 16 or more. This is the actual high speed working memory of the computer where the operating system and programs and apps actually execute. In early days of computers working memory was tiny little magnetic iron doughnuts strung in a complex grid of x, y and sense wires. But for many decades now working memory has been solid state components, either soldered directly into computers (including devices like smartphones of course), or on sticks that can be soldered in or made removable via sockets.
And there have been many generations of DRAM over the years as this kind of memory got faster and denser in terms of capacity. So it's easy to see how shortages and price increases for DRAM being triggered by Big Tech AI's insatiable desire to take over everything is now having such a wide impact on the entire electronics industry.
AI wants our electricity, our water, our personal information, and so much more to churn out deepfakes, wrong answers, and other misinformation, all to benefit that handful of Big Tech Billionaires.
Of course it's up to every individual to decide if they're voluntarily going to participate in this mess when a choice is offered. But more and more that choice is being eliminated, and the reality continues to be that without serious legislation to reign in AI abuses and force Big Tech to take responsibility for the damage that AI causes, the situation is only going to rapidly get worse. It's already bad, but unfortunately when it comes to damage from AI, we haven't really seen anything yet.
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#AI #Google #OpenAI #ChatGPT #Apple #Siri #Gmail
Fun Fact: If Powell so chooses, after his term as Fed chairman ends in a few months, he could stay on the Fed board, still with a vote, until into 2028 when that term ends.
This evening on my usual Monday national network radio tech segment, I'll be discussing a new way that billionaire Big Tech CEO data centers are screwing us, even when we don't live near the data centers, by sucking up all the DRAM, pushing prices way up for everyone else.