Tag: ai

Georgia Urges AI Data Centers to Cut Water Usage as Droughts Rage

Georgia is reportedly struggling to meet the growing water demands of AI data centers, as Atlanta planners urge operators to prioritize community needs and reduce consumption — even as water usage varies widely across facilities.

“There’s no easy answer for how much water data centers are requesting,” Celine Benoit, principal planner for the Atlanta Regional Commission and Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, said, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Benoit, who was speaking at a conference hosted by the American Water Works Association on Monday, added that Georgia residents are unfamiliar with AI data centers and oppose them based on the facilities’ water and energy demands.

Georgia, which is prone to droughts, is one of the areas of the U.S. where data centers are being quickly developed, with the Atlanta area being the second largest data center market in the Unites States as measured by megawatts of power usage.

Proposed AI data centers need water ranging anywhere from 5,000 gallons to 9 million gallons per day, depending on the cooling system, as well as other factors, Benoit noted.

As drought continues to lay waste to the state, local Georgia utilities have pushed back against data center developers’ requests for massive water usage, saying they simply don’t have enough supply to provide millions of gallons per day, she added.

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Government’s latest attempt to censor online discourse is grave threat to free speech

The government’s latest censorship Bill C-34 is framed as legislation necessary to protect children. However, it incorporates some of the worst elements of Bill C-63 – the government’s previous “Online Harms Act” that failed to pass – and adds new censorship powers.

The bill proposes regulating social media, online services, and AI chatbots through the creation of a Digital Safety Commission. The Commission will have broad discretionary power to force compliance from online services and compel the removal of any harmful or “hateful” material.

Controversially, the bill weakens the legal definition of hatred presently used by the courts, reducing the requirement from both vilification and detestation to only one of either vilification OR detestation. The result will be increased censorship and a substantial chill on controversial speech.

Importantly, existing laws capture almost all of the conduct outlined in the bill. This includes cyberbullying and non-consensual distribution of intimate images, terroristic or violent threats, hate speech under the Criminal Code, counselling self-harm (Criminal Code s.241), and possession and distribution of CSAM material.

The bill requires online service providers to create an age verification system. Though the bill doesn’t specify age verification methods, it will undoubtedly require service providers to collect biometric and/or behavioural information from both adults and children, engaging privacy rights and raising fears of security breaches. The effect will be to create a database of personal identifying information and to destroy online anonymity 

Digital services that fail to comply with directives of the Digital Safety Commission will face substantial fines based on a percentage of global revenue.

“Laws protecting children from online harm and abuse are vital. However, for the most part, they already exist. All digital services like YouTube, X, Facebook, and TikTok have reporting and takedown policies and mechanisms for illegal or egregiously harmful material. Criminal charges for hateful or threatening posts are already commonplace. Of course, laws should be enacted to address any gaps, but online age verification for children will require age verification for everyone. So while the government frames the bill as a law to protect children, its effect will be to control digital access, comprehensively surveil and punish adults for online dissent. Together with Bill C-22, it establishes an online surveillance architecture that will negatively impact every Canadian’s right to free expression. Parliament should pursue targeted child-protection measures without undermining privacy, anonymity, and freedom of expression.”

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“Unlike Anything I’ve Seen In 40 Years”: Explosion In Data-Centers And Memory Costs Fueling Third Inflation Wave

We’re finally starting to see hints of relief when it comes to inflation. Prices at the pump are starting to come down, monthly core CPI momentum has slowed, used cars were down around 2% YoY, and food inflation is starting to moderate. On the other hand, there’s America’s massive explosion in artificial-intelligence infrastructure – which is beginning to push prices up on everything from electricity to smartphones.

On Thursday Apple announced a 15-25% price hike on Mac computers and iPads, after CEO Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that the jump in costs was “unlike anything he had seen in any area in over 40 years.” An Apple spokesperson placed the blame on the “rapid expansion of AI data centers, which has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage,” causing component prices to surge.

As the Wall Street Journal notes; 

The money pouring into the AI arms race is unprecedented. Analysts peg capital spending at five of the so-called hyperscalers—Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Oracle—at $741 billion this year, according to FactSet, up nearly 75% from last year.

Where is all that money going? While much of the conversation is focused on what AI can do, the build-out itself is strikingly physical, said Columbia University economist Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. -WSJ

AI data centers require specific, sophisticated equipment to ensure cool, stable operation – as well as electric and fiber-optic cables and backup generators in order to keep them running 24-7. According to the report, Van Nieuwerburgh estimates that the AI buildout could cost somewhere in the range of $8 trillion over the next six years. As such, the demand for components shared throughout the economy (memory, for example), the effects are now trickling down to consumer electronics – like iPads. Other companies such as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have all raised prices on devices.

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Ford Hires Back Former Engineers to Fix Errors Caused by AI

Ford is acknowledging the challenges it faced with AI production and design systems after the automaker recently claimed the top spot in JD Power’s initial quality ranking for mainstream brands for the first time in 16 years. According to Ford, attempting to replace highly-skilled employees with AI-powered systems was a mistake.

The Verge reports that Ford has revealed that its reliance on artificial intelligence and automated systems in vehicle production and design created significant quality problems, forcing the company to bring back experienced engineers and technicians to correct mistakes made by its robots.

Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, explained during a briefing with reporters this week that the automaker believed simply introducing AI and adjusting existing design requirements would automatically yield high-quality vehicles. “Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” Poon said.

The problem was compounded when some of Ford’s most experienced personnel departed before their accumulated institutional knowledge could be fully captured by the company’s automated systems. This loss of expertise proved particularly damaging because the effectiveness of AI depends entirely on the quality of data used to train the models. Ford had underestimated the value of veteran engineers who had worked through multiple vehicle-development cycles and possessed deep understanding of potential problems that could emerge during production.

To address this gap, Ford hired, promoted, or brought back more than 350 experienced engineers to rebuild its technical expertise base. These seasoned professionals were tasked with retraining the automated systems and mentoring younger engineers who were struggling to maintain vehicle quality standards. “That’s where some of our most experienced engineers have had experience solving and identifying those problems before they creep into the system,” Poon said.

Ford’s quality challenges have been well documented in recent years. The automaker currently leads the industry in number of recalls, with quality ratings declining over several years. Difficulties intensified during launches of the Explorer and Aviator models, supply-chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a growing number of vehicle recalls that damaged consumer confidence.

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Maryland Protests Data Center Costs

A group of 80 Maryland state lawmakers are backing a complaint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over the PJM Interconnection’s cost allocation for transmission lines that support data centers.

Driven by the way PJM spreads transmission costs, Maryland ratepayers will pay $1.6 billion over the next decade for transmission projects that were approved in the grid operator’s last three regional transmission expansion plans that are designed to mainly serve out-of-state data centers, Maryland’s ratepayer advocate — the Office of People’s Counsel — said in its May 7 complaint.

“While PJM’s rules are unfair for many PJM states, they impact Maryland disproportionately simply because Maryland sits next to Data Center Alley in Virginia,” the Maryland lawmakers said in a Wednesday filing at FERC. “Given the projections of massive data center growth — more than 80,000 megawatts over the next 20 years — PJM is likely to bill Maryland customers billions more for future data center-driven transmission costs.”

The complaint at FERC comes amid an intense focus across the United States on how data centers can affect the electric bills of existing ratepayers through increased generation and transmission costs. The complaint centers on the transmission side of the equation. It contends that FERC is barred from approving transmission cost allocation methodologies that assign costs to ratepayers that won’t gain “roughly commensurate” benefits.

PJM’s cost allocation methodology assigns half of certain regional transmission projects based on a load-ratio share across its footprint, which assumes that all transmission built will benefit the entire grid, according to the ratepayer advocate’s complaint. The other half of transmission costs are assigned via a “solution-based distribution factor analysis,” which fails to capture certain reliability issues caused by data centers, the ratepayer advocate said.

Spreading data center-driven transmission costs across PJM’s footprint could lead to overbuilding, according to the complaint.

“By socializing data center-driven transmission costs to all ratepayers, it insulates states and utilities that attract speculative load growth from overbuilding and stranded asset risk while shifting those risks to neighboring states’ ratepayers,” the ratepayer advocate said.

Further, state-level large-load tariffs fail to address, and may make worse, the misallocation of transmission costs caused by PJM’s transmission cost allocation methodology, according to the complaint. 

Also, recent FERC-approved utility “transmission security agreements” between utilities and data centers are “often confidential, highly variable, and fail to protect existing customers,” the ratepayer advocate said.

The agreements leave ratepayers exposed to transmission costs caused by data centers, according to the ratepayer advocate. “Moreover, they carry potential legal consequences that may prove difficult to unravel,” the ratepayer advocate said. The ratepayer advocate said FERC should order PJM to revise its cost allocation methodology so that data centers pay for the transmission projects that they cause.

As a start, PJM should be required to assign the costs of transmission projects that are designed to serve data centers and other large loads to the grid operator’s zones where the data centers are located, according to the complaint. That would allow state-level large load tariffs to address those transmission costs, the ratepayer advocate said.

“The upstream leakage of a substantial portion of data center driven costs at the regional level to other zones through the current operation of the PJM tariff creates an unjust subsidy for that data center load,” the ratepayer advocate said.

The complaint calls on FERC to order PJM to re-study the baseline reliability projects approved in its last three regional transmission expansion plans to determine the costs caused by forecast load growth from data centers. 

FERC has extended the comment deadline on the complaint to July 27.

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Automakers Race Into Humanoid Robots As Timeline For Blue-Collar Job Disruption Emerges

Bernstein analyst Eunice Lee is out with a fascinating note explaining why automakers are making a mad dash into the world of humanoid robotics, arguing that their manufacturing scale, supply-chain depth, and years of investment in autonomous driving give them a structural lead in the emerging physical-AI market.

Lee writes that automakers are also seeking new revenue streams beyond the core vehicle business, with humanoids poised to move from factory floors into the physical world across retail, security, public service, and eventually homes.

From Tesla and Hyundai to XPeng, Xiaomi, BYD, Geely, and Chery, automakers are quickly moving beyond EVs and into humanoids through in-house development, acquisitions, minority stakes, and strategic partnerships. Lee said this trend became visible in China, where multiple OEM-linked robots were showcased at the 2026 Beijing Auto Show.

“OEMs are entering humanoid robotics to boost productivity and unlock new revenue streams,” Lee wrote in the note.

She noted, “Automakers have several advantages across hardware, software, and scale. There is significant overlap between vehicle and humanoid components—motors, reducers, sensors —as well as manufacturing.”

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California Residents Sue Gas Stations Alleging AI Price Fixing

Three California residents are suing a fuel pricing company and several gas station operators, alleging that they use artificial intelligence-based pricing systems to raise gasoline prices in an uncompetitive manner.

“Californians are being forced to pay surcharges that cannot be explained by crude oil costs, refining costs, environmental regulation, or taxes,” said the June 22 class action lawsuit, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Sacramento Division.

“Part of the cause of California’s astronomical fuel prices is an illegal algorithmic price-fixing scheme orchestrated by the algorithmic pricing company Kalibrate and some of the state’s largest fuel retailers.”

The company’s Kalibrate Fuel Pricing software, an algorithmic, AI-based pricing system, “connects directly to gas stations’ pumps and signs. Instead of lowering prices to attract drivers, Kalibrate Fuel Pricing relies on the data of competing gas stations to coordinate high prices and wring more money from the pockets of consumers throughout the state,” the lawsuit states.

This is contradictory to historical trends where gas stations have competed to secure customers by “aggressively undercutting” retail prices, the lawsuit said.

The “artificial surcharge” from the algorithmic pricing scheme inflicts a “severe, daily financial toll” on millions of Californians, the lawsuit said. For people whose livelihoods are tied to road transport, such as truck drivers, the higher gas prices eat into their incomes.

According to data from the American Automobile Association, a gallon of regular gasoline costs $5.56 on average in California as of June 23, the highest in the country.

A month ago, prices were at $6.11 per gallon amid US-Iran war tensions. A year ago, prices were still close to $5 at $4.66 per gallon.

California’s current gasoline price of $5.56 per gallon is more than $1.6 higher than the $3.92 national average.

In their lawsuit, the defendants said that Kalibrate Fuel Pricing even has a feature that enables almost all gas stations in a market to raise gasoline prices simultaneously.

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Invasion of the Killer Data Centers

Who controls what data?

Wikipedia tells us that a data center is “a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Data centers are critical infrastructure for the storage and processing of information, and they support the global financial system….and artificial intelligence.”

Data centers are being constructed now on a scale never seen before. These big, beautiful data centers have been described as “foundational to how modern society functions.” And, like so many other nefarious things, they are said to be vital to national security. This would be the same society that is so concerned about national security they left the southern border completely open for decades, and are now hot and heavy to merge our military together with that of another nation. In January, 2025, our beloved former President Biden signed an executive order on Advancing United States Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure, with a decided emphasis on AI’s central role in shaping the economy and our national defense. This order triggered the development of “domestic AI infrastructure,” visibly represented by large-scale data centers. We have to “ensure U.S. economic competitiveness,” after all. It’s not like building factories and reviving domestic industry would do that.

So who is paying for all these data centers? That’s a bit unclear, as you might expect. We do know that Google invested $40 billion just in Texas for AI and new data centers. One report said Microsoft was planning to spend $80 billion on the same thing in 2025. Something called Digital Realty operates more than 300 data centers worldwide. All we know is that it’s a “real estate investment trust.” A company owned by a Dubai billionaire friend of Donald Trump is kicking in $20 billion. The U.S. worked out some kind of “investment agreement” with Saudi Arabia that amounts to $600 billion. Taxpayers are kept in the dark about lucrative data center subsidies, and one source claims we are paying about $1 million for every data center job created. In Israel, Larry Ellison’s Oracle is building a new data center that takes up nine stories. Underground. For “security” reasons. “Experts” warn that “anti-Israel protesters” are among those objecting to all these new data centers.

As always, the Zionist connection is prominent. In a remarkably revealing recent speech, “AI researcher” Dr. Maya Ackerman told the American Jewish Committee, “instead of trying to control the whole world, and trying to somehow manage what’s happening in this big blob of Wikipedia and social media, we can go directly to the companies with clear technical and advocacy solutions. For the first time, there is a path to correcting the digital world.” I’m certainly no “AI researcher,” but I think the lovely Zionist is confessing to an Israeli desire to control the world here. Just imagine if an Iranian “AI researcher” said this. Or a Russian. Bari Weiss would be up in arms. Jerry Seinfeld might cheer a little less loudly at the next Knicks game. Clearly, there is a powerful consortium pushing for these data centers, and an expansion of AI. In my state of Virginia, over 600 new data centers have been, or are being built. Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger is ecstatic about that. But so are Trumpenstein and his cult.

I worked in Information Systems for nearly thirty years, in three different data centers. So my knowledge of data centers is limited to what they historically were. Companies, or government agencies, would utilize a data center to store the data specific to their company or agency. So these sudden super data centers baffle me. One in Utah is said to be envisioned as twice the size of Manhattan. What? How many servers would that require? And what data in Utah is being stored? No particular company built it. No special government agency did. So what is its purpose? What is the purpose of the over 600 data centers springing up in Virginia? Was that much of the state really offline, to require 600 new data centers? Shouldn’t someone be asking these questions? What else could they be used for, other than nefarious AI monitoring? If they’re not for surveillance, explain what they are for. Whose data are they storing, and why is there so much of it? Where was all this data before?

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Crypto’s next billion-dollar hacker may move at superhuman speed

Anthropic’s new Claude Fable 5 puts powerful cyber tools behind safety filters. DeFi, already hit by more than $840 million in hacks this year, is one of the industries with the most to lose if the filters fail.

The newest AI model from Anthropic, which gives users access to stronger, faster reasoning and coding capabilities, lands in a crypto market beset by security problems and could well exacerbate them.

The company released Claude Fable 5 on Tuesday, the first public model in the Mythos class and, Anthropic says, its most powerful yet. So powerful, in fact, the company released two versions: one for widespread use and the other for more restricted distribution.

The public version sports stronger reasoning and coding ability while blocking the most dangerous uses. A less-hamstrung counterpart, Claude Mythos 5, is available only to vetted users in cybersecurity and critical infrastructure.

Experts say Mythos can find and chain zero-day vulnerabilities, or previously unknown software flaws, and help turn a bug into a working attack. Anthropic says the software tries to intercept possible attack vectors by detecting high-risk requests. Once identified, they are routed to a weaker model, Claude Opus 4.8.

The company says this specific fallback triggers in fewer than 5% of sessions. It also said in a blog post that specialized cybersecurity teams and more than 1,000 hours of external bug-bounty work found no universal way of breaking the system.

Still, Anthropic recognizes that the system is unlikely to be foolproof and says it expects determined, well-funded attackers to keep trying because the capability is valuable.

“The uplift from Mythos-level capabilities is valuable to many adversaries—for instance, those who could financially gain from cyberattacks—and we therefore expect them to be motivated to try to circumvent our safety measures,” the firm said in the post.

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Chevron Lands 20-Year Deal To Power Microsoft’s AI Expansion

Microsoft has signed a 20-year agreement with Chevron to power a massive new AI-focused data center campus in West Texas, underscoring the growing race among tech companies to secure reliable energy supplies, according to Bloomberg.

The project, known as Project Kilby, is expected to begin generating power in 2028 and eventually reach 2.67 gigawatts—enough electricity for more than 530,000 Texas homes.

Chevron is developing the project with Engine No. 1 and expects to make a final investment decision later this year. Despite the enormity of the deal and the inroads into powering AI directly, Chevron stock was little changed after the cash open.

Bloomberg writes that the site near Pecos, Texas, will use natural gas from the Permian Basin to fuel GE Vernova turbines and generate electricity directly for Microsoft’s planned data center campus. Because the facility will produce its own power, it will not draw from the grid.

“Consumers are concerned about and are already feeling the effect of power-demand growth,” said Jeff Gustavson, Chevron’s president of New Energies. “We specifically designed this, in this part of the country, to avoid any of that.”

The agreement comes as Microsoft accelerates its AI infrastructure buildout to compete with Alphabet and Amazon. The company has said it plans to double its data center footprint over the next two years, driving demand for large-scale, dependable power sources.

Chevron argues the project also creates a productive use for abundant Permian natural gas that is often wasted because pipeline capacity is limited. “This is the most abundant gas basin in the country, maybe the world,” Gustavson said.

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