President Donald Trump did what he did on Monday evening and posted on his social media, this time about how Microsoft will not make our debts increase by creating a large amount of demand for new energy with its AI projects.
First of all, the president says he “doesn’t want the American people to pay higher electricity bills because of Data Centers,” which is a good thought, although someone should tell him that it looks like what he feared has already happened. In any case, what he teases about Microsoft, he says, is the first of many energy-related projects with big tech companies. To that end, he writes:
“First is Microsoft, who my team has been working with, and who will make big changes starting this week to make sure Americans don’t ‘pick up the tab’ for ENERGY, in the form of high utility bills. We are the ‘HOTTEST’ country in the World, and Number One in AI. Data Centers are the key to that explosion, and to keep Americans, those who build superpower and SECURE Technology. Thank you, and congratulations to Microsoft. More to come soon! President DJT”
As Gizmodo wrote last summer, the demand for electricity from the massive data centers used to train and run AI models has driven up America’s power average, and the amount varies from place to place. On average, consumer energy bills rose about 6.5% in the year when that story came out over the summer, but, for example, in Maine, it rose a staggering 36.3%, and that’s reportedly because of the “AI tax.” Meanwhile, utility companies such as Pacific Gas & Electric have reported record profits in recent years. Funny how that works.
It’s really anyone’s guess how Trump and Microsoft will resolve this issue. Trump has been swinging around the populist economy lately—which appears to be a way of deals he can fight to win for a while, like when he got Novo Nordisk to lower the price of Ozempic. Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee followed up that mysterious deal with a letter to Novo Nordisk questioning what might have been included in the deal’s secret terms—including some vagueness about future prices for some drugs. But who wants to hear about the Democrats’ dumb letter when President Deals successfully reversed the price of what he called a “fat drug”?
But keeping energy bills down is tricky for Microsoft to do since, unlike Novo Nordisk, Microsoft isn’t setting the price Trump is trying to lower. One thing Trump would want from Microsoft, is that Microsoft simply subsidize everyone’s energy bills. That would do the trick, but in the end I realized that Microsoft was not a charity.
However, it was reported six days ago that Microsoft is already working with Midcontinent Independent System in a project aimed at modernizing the electric grid with Microsoft technology. Reuters writes that Microsoft’s technology will help “predict and respond to weather-related power grid disruptions, plan transmission lines, and speed up certain operations.”
This doesn’t sound like a slam dunk to dramatically lower energy costs, but it’s easy to imagine the development of a wider grid at least spreading the price increase more evenly, or even helping to consolidate unused non-renewable energy and alleviate the popular bottlenecks caused by an outdated power grid. But is this, or something like it, what Trump is referring to? For his sake I don’t hope he won’t, because it sounds like the kind of confusing and confusing plan that is usually associated with sleazy Democrats, not Mr. Cheap Ozempic.
Gizmodo contacted Microsoft and the White House for more information on the program. We will update when we hear back.
