Comment by ajkjk
8 hours ago
it's to blame in the sense that there is a counterfactual reality where the AI companies pay for their own power and your bill doesn't go up and we can pass a law to make that counterfactual real. but yeah, blame is supposed to be about assigning responsibility. the change is attributed to AI in the sense that if they didn't exist it wouldn't have gone up, but technically the responsibility here is on policymakers to do something now that we are aware of the attribution, and they deserve to be blamed if they don't. blaming AI companies directly is a contemptuous mindset that blames them basically just for existing. which might be cathartic but it's not useful.
Why is AI demand any different than other business demand? What you're advocating for is intentionally handcuffing a growing industry for no reason other than you don't like them.
because they're driving up electric prices disproportionately...
the argument is to handcuff them because of the externalities. which is one of the things laws are for. It's not about fairness it's about whether this is the world we want to live in. The market was designed a certain way; the design stops benefitting the public the way it should; so update the design, easy.
Crypto mining was similar
the "growing industry" can pay for itself.
Any industry that stresses public infrastructure is in the same category. They all should be regulated and not handed, in the form of tax breaks, what should be public money to invest in additional infrastructure.