alt Hacker News> Maybe taxing a kWh of the AI data center energy consumption should be a thing?
That sounds excellent. Also water usage.
Really, AI has externalities and it should pay for it.
> Maybe taxing a kWh of the AI data center energy consumption should be a thing?
That sounds excellent. Also water usage.
Really, AI has externalities and it should pay for it.
That would be a highly bureaucratic solution with significant overheads. Would everyone pay extra tax per kWh or just AI computers? Tax it on the producer or consumer side? How would you verify that a particular data center is "bad computation" and needs a different tax rate on its energy usage.
Should an AI data center from pharmaceuticals or biotech startup be taxed extra per kWh, even if the AI is purely used for medical research?