NEW YORK: President Donald Trump declared the public would benefit from a commitment by the nation’s largest tech companies to defray electricity costs related to artificial intelligence (AI) development – but it might take a while.
Trump said during a Wednesday roundtable with tech executives that “many Americans are still concerned that the massive energy demand from AI data centres could drive up their electricity bills in the future” and that thanks to his pledge, they “aren’t going to have to even think about it.”
“Your electric bills will actually come down. It’ll take a little while, but not long,” he said. The companies all signed a non-binding, five-point compact pledging to secure their own electricity for the energy-hungry data centres they’re constructing as part of a sweeping AI push.
They vowed to build or buy added power supplies, pay for related infrastructure upgrades and negotiate separate rate structures with utilities and states wherever data centres are built.
Trump said that representatives in attendance included Matt Garman of Amazon Web Services Inc, Dina Powell McCormick of Meta Platforms Inc, Microsoft Corp’s Brad Smith, Ruth Porat of Google parent Alphabet Inc, Oracle Corp’s Clay Magouyrk, Brad Lightcap of OpenAI Inc and Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX, which owns Elon Musk’s xAI Corp.
“This agreement will ensure that America can maintain the most advanced AI infrastructure on the planet without American families being forced to pick up the tab,” Trump said. — Bloomberg
