Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders repeated his call to halt artificial intelligence (AI) data center construction Sunday, and proposed billionaires adopt certain left-wing policies.
Nearly 3,000 AI data centers are under construction or planned, according to a Dec. 18 report by Axios, supplementing about 4,000 already operating. Sanders claimed technology executives such as X owner Elon Musk, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos should agree to provide free housing and health care.
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“They make huge amounts of money. Well, I think one of the things I think we need to do and right now, among many other things, we’re seeing data centers sprouting all over the country, raising electric bills for people in the communities, et cetera,” Sanders told “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper. “I think we need to be thinking seriously about a moratorium on these data centers. Frankly, I think you got to slow this process down.”
“It’s not good enough for the oligarchs to tell us, ‘It’s coming, you adapt,’” Sanders continued. “What are they talking about? They’re going to guarantee health care to all people? What are they going to do when people have no jobs? What are they going to do? Make housing free? So I think we need to take a deep breath and I think we need to slow this thing down. One way to do it would probably be a moratorium on data centers.”
In Shanghai, China has been building five large-scale data centers, seeking to add 100 exaflops in computing power, according to the South China Morning Post. China is also constructing AI data centers in Xinjiang province using 115,000 high-end Nvidia chips, the epicenter of the country’s reported mass internment of Uyghurs, Bloomberg reported.
Google purchased energy company Intersect for $4.75 billion in cash, while Trump Media and Technology Group merged with TAE technology in a $6 billion deal, as the companies pursuing AI seek reliable energy sources.
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