||| FROM THE WASHINGTON POST |||
Five leading public AI companies are collectively on track to spend about $700 billion this year on big-ticket projects, as they splurge on building and outfitting data centers stuffed with powerful computer chips to turbocharge AI calculations.
But critics worry that the up-front costs to develop AI have become so mammoth that the investment can possibly pay off only if AI reshapes life, work and the economy in a way that uncorks massive new profits for these technology firms.
It won’t be clear for some time whether AI will continue improving as quickly as it has in the past few years.
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A good example of this that will hit us ratepayers in the pocketbook is a Seattle Times article last week about Amazon outbidding Puget Sound Energy, $83 billion to $82 billion, for a 1200 solar farm in Oregon that was on the market. PSE could no longer match or beat Amazon, which has much deeper pockets to reach into, given its huge profits. The power will go to Amazon’s data centers rather than into the PNW grid, where it could have benefitted millions.
Sorry, that’s $83 million to $82 million, not “billion.”
Here’s a link to that Seattle Times article, published February 5, for those who want to dig deeper:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/amazon-outbids-wa-utility-for-one-of-nations-largest-solar-projects/
And it’s a 1200 megawatt solar farm, so $83 million comes to almost $70,000 per megawatt.