While your kids are using Chat GPT for therapy, and your influencer cousin is creating anime superhero movies with Sora 2, is your electricity bill headed for the moon?
That’s the driving consumer-policy question asked pointedly by artificial intelligence consultant Brandon Owens and Colorado School of Mines public policy professor Morgan Bazilian. They team up for op-eds clanging alarm bells for consumers and policymakers who must cope with AI’s exploding demand for limited electricity supplies.
“While the world marvels at what large language models can write or design, fewer people are asking a more basic question: who’s paying to keep their servers running?” the duo wrote in a piece published by The National Interest, a magazine published by the Center for the National Interest public policy think tank.
They warn that without more public attention, the AI giants will be “socializing” the enormous energy costs of running their suddenly ubiquitous programs, while privatizing the enormous profits. Beyond the simple economics of their demand pushing up prices for all consumers, the AI industry possesses other advantages, the authors argue: AI giants possess hidden information and pipelines that allow them to control the flow of energy to their advantage.
“Electricity demand is no longer predictable — it is algorithmically spiked and AI-governed. Policy is lagging. Capital is stampeding. And the consequences are arriving faster than most institutions can measure — let alone manage. This is not a temporary distortion. It is a structural realignment of energy, intelligence, and infrastructure,” according to Owens’ consulting firm.
To read the entire article, visit The Colorado Sun.
