Alaska and Norway understood something critical when oil was discovered: if you don't assert collective ownership of the resource before private companies capture all the value, you never will. Alaska amended its constitution. Norway built the largest sovereign wealth fund on earth. Both were acts of people saying "this belongs to us, and we deserve a return on its extraction."

We are in exactly that window right now with AI. The resource is being extracted at an incredible pace and almost all the value is flowing to a handful of companies. The longer people wait to assert sovereign ownership over the collective intelligence that makes AI possible, the harder it becomes.

If you think this is crazy, ask yourself what’s actually crazier: demanding a share of the value built on your collective labor, or watching trillions of dollars get extracted from it and saying nothing.

the idea of Alaskans getting a check just for existing sounded crazy too, right up until it didn’t.

because no one believes there are legal consequences if they don't

and there are a lot of ways to doge it even if there where a reliable government in place

like especially if they do what they have been doing recently (run their own generator, build their own power planes) a lot of this cost is implicit and as such very dogeable. E.g. higher cost for gas power planes for other due to major increase of demand, higher medical cost due to more air pollution, higher fuel prices, etc. etc. (not even speaking about anything climate change).

I used to think we were progressing up an exciting tech tree. That seems naive now.

Water, land, energy, the soundscape, intellectual property that incentivizes the dissemination of good ideas, digital networks of information and self-expression, perhaps even the economic value of expertise itself are all being sacrificed in the now for promises of utopia in the future.

Precious eggs to give to those promising a utopian omelet, eventually.

Exactly opposite will happen. Reason is, when Big Tech is paying huge amounts of money to contractors to build those power generation facilities and service companies to service it, they will abandon servicing other facilities (remember how Micron dropped consumer RAMs last year because of enterprise demand) or require higher pay from everyone else

There's some speculation in the comments about what is or isn't in the pledge. I recommend reading it yourself.

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/ratepayer-protec...

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/rate...

Increasing natural gas generation is of course disastrous policy with a major death toll from the climate disaster, there needs to be a rampdown of fossils use and production.

I was unaware it was optional.

Building pipelines is a long and arduous process and one that will not be done in time to reasonably accommodate the increase in natural gas demand presented by these data centers.

Launched in 2010 by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett, it was sold as a historic shift in philanthropy. Fast forward to 2026, and the data suggests it’s been more of a "Wealth Preservation Society" than a massive wealth redistribution event.

This will be just as trustworthy. We need laws - not merely rhetoric pledges !

One could say "use renewables", but even that has externalities: that means an increase in demand for solar panels, or wind turbines, or the labour to maintain them, which again leads to an increase in prices.

The pledge is meaningless political theater meant to placate voters in the mid-terms.

- They already invest in new power plants and connection infrastructure when they bring in new datacenters - Electricity for datacenters is based on capacity rather than actual usage - They already have backup generators at most datacenters that they can run during outages. It wouldn't be much work to allow those to feed power back into the grid in extraordinary circumstances - They generally use local contractors to build them for practicality purposes anyway.

This is just some fancy PR and nothing else.

I'm sure we'll be hearing all about how much this benefits households in the coming months and years.

That's why he wants to go into space (10x solar potential because you don't have a day/night cycle, no clouds, no dust/rain, no temperature loss, no orientation issues, and no atmosphere reducing solar).

To me it seems ridiculous, for one because sending 150kg to space costs about $500k, and this is about the weight of a solar installation that costs $800 to install and generates about $1000 worth of electricity across 20 years at utility wholesale prices.

But suppose it was cheaper and viable, and earth-electricity was indeed capped, you could argue (if you believe the hype) that developing AI is an existential arms-race objective for US/China.

But from what I've understood that's just not the case at all. Something like 170+ coal plants are scheduled to be decommissioned, and the average coal and gas plant runs at 40-50% of capacity, because wind/solar is eating their lunch (cheaper marginal $ per kWh). i.e. there is so little demand that these plants keep using less capacity and shutting down superfluous plants.

You'd think if experts believed electricity was going to be a bottleneck, that venture capital / AI companies, or even traditional capital, would be buying up plants or signing guaranteed-usage contracts. But it doesn't seem to be the case.

The general goal for utilities has been to pursue the next “thing” and work toward some sort of regulation to lock in demand, which can be used as a lever to seek price increases and consolidate.

If there’s margin to be had, the utilities will find a way, and prices will go up either way.

Saying they’re going to pay for generation and transmission adds little. That’s already baked into the charges! It’s like saying they’re going to finally pay for the farmers to grow the produce and the drivers to get the produce to market when they buy apples--as though spontaneous generation and teleportation was ever an option.

Pledge my ass. It is either law mandating those massive datacenters absorb the cost with heavy penalties for non compliance or it is just BS talk (what it seems to be at the moment)

I can see how big tech is enthusiastic about freestyling this. Eh sorry I mean bear the cost

Take the case of Duke Energy in North Carolina, which illegally raised rates too much. Utilities prices are supposedly regulated but utilities work around this by simply moving costs to things they can charge whatever for (eg transmission costs vs energy costs).

The NC Court of Appeals ruled that Duke Energy's actions were illegal BUT there would be no refunds for customers [1], in part because lawmakers passed a law to allow them to do this retroactively [2]. Also, if Duke Energy had to repay customers they can simply raise prices to recoup those costs even though the money was improperly charged in the first place.

So consumers will keep paying for the infrastructure to connect up these data centers and will keep subsidizing the ongoing energy costs.

[1]: https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/no-refunds-for-duke-...

[2]: https://sustaincharlotte.org/press-release-nc-lawmakers-over...

People are not voluntarily going to build things that make less profit.

It is a suckers bet assuming the unscrupulous will grow a conscience. =3

David Roberts (https://volts.wtf) has repeatedly noted that AI companies need the power, need it now, and have the capital to get it. So he (and others) advocate that Big Tech fund the grid improvements and new power generation.

Point #1 Virtual Power Plants

Roberts advocates adopting virtual power plants (VPPs). Think grid of grids, like the internet is a network of networks. Think peer-to-peer energy sharing. VPPs unlock dynamic load shifting, two-way energy sharing (think of all those roof top solar panels and powerwalls), and therefore -- most importantly -- reduces peak demand on a grid which will allow greater utilitization.

IIRC: our grids currently operate at 30% capacity (to accommodate rare peak demand events). Grid enhancement techs plus VPPs can boost that to 80% or higher. Reducing the urgency for building more transmission and distribution infra. (In the short term; we still need to greatly embiggen our grid(s).)

It'd be kinda amazing if the urgency to build more data centers mooted the incumbent's (utilities, regulators) opposition to improving our grid(s), thereby benefiting everyone everywhere.

Tangent: there's a backlog of grid enhancing technologies available, just waiting for funding and incentives to line up.

Tangent: VPPs also enable new financial products, which will further accelerate electrification (of All The Things).

Point #2 Solar + Battery

Solar + battery is the fastest, cheapest way to get new power generation. More so every year.

Yes, we still need to massively invest in All The Things to reach Net Zero and beyond. Wind, geothermal, nuclear (fission and fusion), hydro, every flavor of storage, de-carbonize industry and agriculture, conservation, rewilding, and everything else.

But at this moment in time, today, we need gigawatts of new generation and the grid that can support it. That means solar + battery.

Aside, IIRC, data centers are projected to demand just 5% our electricity supply. So society will be the net beneficiaries (on this axis).

Were Big Tech to fund the generation and grid that we need, maybe society will indulge some of Big Tech's less egregious offenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

Important Point: the rising costs of transmission, distribution, and fuel costs account for electricity's higher prices. New renewable power generation is now the cheapest option, and getting cheaper. The challenge is delivering that cheap electricity to customers.

[1] Narrator: they will [2] Narrator: they won't

That will never happen, but would prevent we the people from bearing these costs directly.