Jay Smith @jaynemesis: "𝗜𝘀 𝗔𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴? //𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡..."

United Kingdom

𝗜𝘀 𝗔𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴? //𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝟷 𝑜𝑓 𝟸 - 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝟸 It’s 2026, in just a few years AI has gone from being a distant hypothetical, to something hundreds of millions of people use every week. Big tech companies are spending billions building out AI infrastructure. AI has been used to empower people to execute tasks far outside their area of expertise and comfort. A regular person with no programming skills can create a web application. An entrepreneur can get feedback and ideas on products they are developing. It can provide recipes for your left-over Christmas food and ingredients. Or it can help shorten and fact-check my overly long eToro posts like this one. AI has undoubtedly brought immense benefits to companies and individuals who embrace it. But in recent months some meaningful downsides of AI have started to emerge - and I see a growing likelihood that people begin pushing back. 𝙀𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙘𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘿𝙖𝙩𝙖 𝘾𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 I’ve spoken about this quite extensively over the last few years, so feel free to check out my last couple of posts about AI’s demand for electricity here: shorturl.at/GHJwc shorturl.at/5DuMD The US DOE (Department Of Energy) released a report a year ago projecting Data Centers could consume as much as 12% of all US electricity by 2028 vs around 4.4% in 2024. The International Energy Agency estimates global electricity demand from data centers will more than quadruple by 2030, consuming more electricity than entire countries such as Japan. Despite big tech investing heavily in new energy generation, mostly by building renewables and re-commissioning old nuclear power plants - it’s not enough. Supply is not keeping pace with the growing demand, leading to higher bills in many regions of the world where data centers are prevalent. A Bloomberg analysis of wholesale electricity prices across thousands of locations in the US revealed the price had increased as much as 267% over the past 5 years in areas located near data centers. This infographic from Bloomberg adds a lot of colour: i.ibb.co/wFLC4GYN/Data-Centers-Electricity-Bloomberg-Map.png Residents living close to data centers are not only impacted by higher energy bills though. Water is also required in high quantities for data centers, and noise pollution has become a major complaint for surrounding communities, turning AI data centers into an important local political issue in many regions. 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙚 Hardware prices have exploded in the past year, and the impact of those higher costs have not yet hit mainstream consumers. PC gamers were among the first to feel the pain. High performance Memory especially Graphics chips are very similar to what is used in data centers. As demand has grown, gamers are increasingly bidding against tech giants with deeper pockets for their hardware, driving prices higher. Memory producer $MU (Micron Technology, Inc.) recently announced their exit from the consumer RAM market, halting sales to 3rd party brands, and discontinuing their own 30 year old Crucial Memory brand. They specifically cited AI demand as the reason for the decision. Samsung’s internal mobile and tablet division was reportedly denied RAM allocations for future devices by their own memory division, who were instead prioritizing AI clients. This has led to industry insiders suggesting that new smartphones, tablets, laptops and other devices could have worse hardware specifications than their predecessors, including flagship phones. Recent industry reports suggest that both $NVDA (NVIDIA Corporation) and $AMD (Advanced Micro Devices Inc) will hike prices for their GPUs in early 2026 by more than double in some cases. The Nvidia 5090 (their flagship Graphics Card) is expected to rise from $1,999 to $5,000 - making already expensive top-end gaming PC’s completely unobtainable for most consumers. The end result - consumers and businesses are left with more expensive, less powerful devices. Something I believe could impact productivity. //𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝟷 𝑜𝑓 𝟸 - 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝟸

AI is GOOD for society overall

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AI is BAD for society overall

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