Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖Today I learned that there are only three English cities with an electrical consumption greater than 200 megawatts: London, Manchester and Birmingham. By comparison, the people who want to build AI data centres here, which nobody asked for, want a supply of up to 1 gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) for each one. That’s how skewed this whole nonsense is.
And that’s before we discuss the precious cooling water they’ll use once and dump. Maybe if each data centre provided a city-wide district heating system from their waste heat…
soletan 🇺🇦🐸@christineburns OpenAI is about to top that with planned 6GW of energy consumption for running AI data centers.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/07/tech/openai-chatgpt-ai-infrastructure-explainer
@christineburns It's worth remembering, that OpenAI is currently a non-profit company and I'd expect such a company to serve the greater benefit of a whole society, but given such developments and the fact that it tries to convert into a regular for-profit company that expectation is just ridiculous.
Luna chan@soletan @christineburns 6 gigwatts thats insane.
They want that much electricity then pony up for some nuclear power plants or wind and solar farms plus storage.
Don't want to pay for them then get lost tech bros.
They want that much electricity then pony up for some nuclear power plants or wind and solar farms plus storage.
Don't want to pay for them then get lost tech bros.
Entertainment Porpoises Only@soletan @christineburns Counterpoint: this will *never* happen
ideogram
BashStKid@christineburns Don’t give them greenwashing ideas.
Molly in Missouri@christineburns and walked 10 feet on a 9 foot plank...
StoneBear 
@christineburns Paris is actually working on that. AND the amount of energy these things draw is ridonkulous... criminal, frankly.
Guy Bagshaw@christineburns All to help with what? Dumbing down citizens further?
Oliver Kohll@christineburns A Cleaning Up listener? Half way through that episode. They do have some interesting conversations and yes that is mad.
There was someone a few days ago (forget where) who said that after all the AI hype has crashed we'd be left with lots of very cheap computing capacity as a side effect, or I guess at least electricity.
robcorneliusThis has to end, right here and now. There is talk of building a huge new reservoir in Oxfordshire too. I bet it will be used for data centres not for drinking water.
Neo-liberal economics demands unlimited economic growth so capitalists create new shit to buy whether we want or need it. AI is the equivalent of cheap plastic crap at the dollar/pound store. We know its crap and it will break in 5 minutes. We still buy it because we are told we have to and there is no alternative.
Model collapse can't come quick enough. On the other hand it might have already happened and the people making billions shovelling this shit down our throats don't care.
Jay@christineburns New rule: you can open and run any data center you want, tax free for life, if and only if it runs entirely upon the output of what the C-suite can pedal.
rawe@WhiteCatTamer @christineburns erm... is that an electric bike? Now if you plug the charger into that dyno thing... something something perpetuum mobile free AI slop
Armin Hanisch@christineburns 1 Gigawatt? Crazy Altmann: „hold my beer“ https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-new-data-centers-more-power-new-york-city
They lost all contact with reality…
They lost all contact with reality…
Csillag Tamás@christineburns I would share this with others if there is a source to refer to.
Kevin RussellSay no.
Just say no.
Accept no yesses. Defeat yes men, they'll all be men. Say no.
A company in Canada said they were building a crypto crap tastic factory and wanted power delivered.
The government said, "no"
BC government taken to court.
Court said piss off.
Say no. Vote to defeat yes men, any party. Say it LOUD, directly to a face, and with a paper letter.
No more data centres, topped out, all done. No more AI shyte either. Say no.
Plaidbaron@kevinrns @christineburns Never thought Id root for a hydro company but hell yeah.
Hydro in Canada means an electric utility, the great majority of Canadian electricity is still hydro, over 60%, and several big provinces are 90% powered by hydroelectric dams.
@kevinrns @christineburns Im aware. Im Canadian. Im just not a big fan of most of our power companies.
Governments. Hydro, except in deluded give our stuff to billionaires Nova Scotia, is generally public, abused by selfservative politicians.
When youre being ripped off by energy, its the government you change in Canada.
Nicole ParsonsThe intent of AI & cryptocurrency data centers isn't to produce a product with revenues.
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-energy-industry-ai-fossil-fuels-pittsburgh-summit/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/15/trump-ai-oil-energy-summit
It's to stop the switch to solar & wind & inflate fossil fuel demand.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/04/pfas-pollution-data-centers-ai
https://fortune.com/2025/10/07/renewable-energy-outpaces-electricity-demand-coal-trump-ai-data/
Trump's billionaires are converting "free markets" into state capitalism (ie kleptocracy)
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/trumps-state-capitalism
https://www.investors.com/news/trump-stock-market-grab-nvidia-intel-mp-materials-us-economy/
🥑 Yours Truly! Unruly 🇨🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦🌻A new economic framework for understanding needs to be realized.
Unbridled criminality by billionaires is one end of the spectrum and it's where we are headed.
At the other end of the spectrum is a totally regulated for common good economy.
George Monbiot writes about the post-WW2 world order where there was a recognition that a social safety net thwarts the rise of populist fascist movements.
If public tax dollars are spent on improving the lives of all the electorate, not just the rich, the means for more volatility are removed.
Wars, revolution, economic crashes, etc are thwarted by a satisfied electorate.
Trade, regulation & oversight, feeding, housing, & jobs smooths out trouble before it grows.
MWT@christineburns Solar power technology is getting cheaper all the time. They should invest heavily in it until they can afford to power their data centres with it. By the time the AI bubble collapses, the rest of us will be able to benefit from the tech improvements. Win win? :p
The Penguin of Evil@mwt @christineburns data centre people hate renewables because variable power pricing makes billing complicated and it harder to sweat their expensive server assets. That's the biggest problem IMHO. Water recovery can be done. District heating can be done although some countries with brain dead zoning rules would struggle
Daniel Blake@etchedpixels @mwt @christineburns while fossil fuels have such excellent price stability and no political risk?
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen@christineburns It’s corporate colonialism, exploiting local resources for the benefit of shareholders.
L0wKeyIt’s being proposed that 10Gw of data centres for AI is to be built over the next couple of years. The *whole* of the UK uses ~30Gw. This is beyond insane.
Also, a nuclear reactor produces ~1Gw. Where are 10 of those coming from in a couple of years. They take decades.
Utter nonsense, the whole thing.
I’m all for progress and capital spending etc, but the AI plans are fundamentally unhinged.
Non_Saturatio (Langile)@christineburns And very probably we could make a similar comparison around water use.
(@tunubesecamirio usually shares interesting info about this)
(@tunubesecamirio usually shares interesting info about this)