Recently, there has been a rise in the buzzwords of “AI” and Datacenters in Alaska. Let us calmly consider the facts of the matter: AI still isn’t able to generate the profit that is required to offset the insane levels of investment – and may well never be able to be profitable enough. And what is billed and being sold with the label “AI” is more correctly called “LLM”, or Large Language Model. It is not “Artificial Intelligence”. Now, with that important distinction out of the way, let us proceed. Not only is AI not profitable enough to justify the spending, but the Datacenters being built aren’t even ready or able to handle the servers needed for AI. Datacenters need lots of energy and cooling, so a lot of building are being built with a lot of Servers inside them, but because the energy doesn’t exist and the cooling hasn’t been implemented, there are warehouses and servers full of GPU and RAM just sitting around doing nothing except driving up the prices of GPU and RAM! Also all the power drain when we aren’t on green renewables and the water problems it is creating for the local environments. “As AI expands, we’re going to need these data centers,” Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, said. “Many of them are looking at Alaska because our cool temperatures prevent the need for so much water.” The data center demand is collapsing right now. In response to the recent Opinion: How Alaska can use our energy advantage to capitalize on the AI gold rush Nick Begich (ADN, https://www.adn.com/opinions/2026/04/23/opinion-how-alaska-can-use-our-energy-advantage-to-capitalize-on-the-ai-gold-rush/) Nick states: “Artificial intelligence and the infrastructure that supports it — data centers, advanced computing and next-generation manufacturing — are expanding rapidly across the United States.Across the country, states are moving aggressively to attract this new wave of investment and build out energy capacity. Texas is projected to become the largest data center hub in the United States by 2030, according to a 2025 year-end report from JLL’s North America Data Center. Texas understands what is at stake: jobs, economic growth and the opportunity to benefit from the technologies that will define the next century.” When in fact opposition to data centers is growing in every state. Some examples: Why are communities pushing back against data centers? Tech, data policy expert says concerns legitimate over rising power rates, water use, environmental issues amid mushrooming growth https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/04/why-are-communities-pushing-back-against-data-centers/ “I think the public is quite right to be concerned about data centers. My research and other research have shown that these are a bad deal for communities on the local level.” “It’s been impressive just how well communities have organized around this, how educated they have gotten about the topic, and how many of these projects they have been able to stop. It’s a sort of David and Goliath fight; local communities are pushing back against some of the wealthiest companies in the world.” –$64 billion of data center projects have been blocked or delayed amid local opposition https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report 7 – Prince William, Virginia. $24.7 billion. QTS & Compass Data Centers. — Delayed The $24.7 billion PW Digital Gateway project, led by QTS Realty Trust Inc. and Compass Datacenters, has been delayed due to widespread local opposition and is currently being contested in court through at least three lawsuits filed by activist groups. Opponents have raised concerns about the project’s environmental impact, noise pollution, strain on the power grid, and potential damage to nearby historic sites. In October 2024, a Prince William County judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the rezoning approvals for the PW Digital Gateway project, citing insufficient grounds for trial. The plaintiffs have since appealed to the Virginia Court of Appeals, leaving the project’s future uncertain. Current Status: As of March 2025, the PW Digital Gateway data center project, led by QTS Realty Trust Inc. and Compass Datacenters, remains delayed due to ongoing legal challenges and local opposition. –The local implications of data centers for rural communities in the US Research summary of America’s Rural Future virtual symposium | January 27, 2026 The local implications of data centers for rural communities in the US The central question is not whether data centers are “good” or “bad,” but how benefits and risks get allocated and what forms of governance, local authority, and transparency can help leaders maximize local benefits while protecting community interests. Local opposition is likely to soon become the leading constraint on data center siting and approvals. Such opposition cuts across political divisions at the local level. While the affordability of electricity and water management are important issues, the overriding concerns in many cases seem to be more about the loss of a community’s way of life and local control over its future. See Working class neighborhoods are resisting data centers at 5 times the rate of wealthy ones The data center protest movement has gone nationwide. From Vermont to Oklahoma to Indiana to California, communities are organizing to halt the tech industry’s drive to build out data centers in their neighborhoods. This week, the New York state legislature passed a one-year moratorium on data center construction and sent it to the governor’s desk where it awaits signature. Chicago’s governor has suspended data center tax breaks. Little has proven as politically galvanizing, or as unifying; the bipartisan issues of 2026 are data center disdain and AI animosity. From the research firm Public First (and hat tip to WIRED reporter Molly Taft for flagging): How did the US, the heart of AI’s boom, become the thorn in its side? Our survey provides a few explanations. Informed Opposition The public is more aware than before of what AI is and does, and of what data centers are and do. When we were polling AI 5 years ago, it was a fringe interest at best. We’ve now seen clear growth in awareness and understanding, and more developed usage of tools, particularly among the 25-44 year old age range. Our analysis of who is aware of AI has needed to move from “who has opened an LLM” to “who is using LLMs in a sophisticated, integrated way”. Our survey shows that America is middle of the pack when it comes to claimed awareness of data centers. One of the higher levels compared to other “developed” markets. We’d expect as much, reflecting the level of data center roll-out in America. The employment benefits of data centers are variable and often overstated. Local rural communities would benefit from a greater focus on job quality, duration, and what is necessary to make positions attainable for residents. Infrastructure and resource demands—including electricity, water, public services, and even environmental and housing pressures—are critical considerations for local governments when evaluating the long-term viability and sustainability of data centers, especially where systems are already strained. Local governments generally have limited authority over these impacts, yet their residents are affected by changes in prices, service demands, and environmental impacts. The analysis also mentions “major obstacles” for data centers in the 49th state. Those include the cost of electricity (what the analysis says is some of the highest in the country), reliance on fossil fuels, delivering data to overseas customers, and the price of cooling.Proponents say Alaska’s cold climate is a natural fit for data centers — what McCabe called “naturalcooling.” “One of the reasons to locate data centers in Alaska is because they wouldn’t have to use that evaporative cooling, which uses a lot of water,” he said. The UAF analysis says it may not be as much of a draw as advertised. “Cooling costs typically represent 5% or less of ongoing operations and maintenance costs,” the analysis reads. “So perhaps the cold winters may not offer quite as many thermal energy advantages as one would think.” There is currently one bill in the Alaska legislature directly related to data centers. Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, said in the bill’s sponsor statement that it will “ensure that data centers truly benefit Alaskans.” They also acknowledge “A growing movement in response to community and ratepayer concerns over data centers has derailed billions of dollars’ worth of potential investment in the Lower 48.“ Finally let’s ask: What is the purpose of these mega datacenters? To solve all the world’s problems? To make it possible that no one has to have a job, because AI provides for our every needs? Or it is akin to any historic “Gold Rush”, in that a few are selling shovels with the knowledge that it’s all a dry hole. And what always happens after the gold rush? In the AI gold rush, everyone is selling the same shovels Billions spent and hypothetical returns: the AI boom explained with six charts “The entire market has become one giant AI edifice,” he says. “The danger is a repeat of the dotcom bubble – a huge crash, and years of lost returns. By some measures valuations aren’t as stretched as then but this looks like an incredibly dangerous market.” The investment bank acknowledges there could be problems with this scale of commitment. What if the datacenters are delayed? Its currently only being used for “AISlop” images that entertain the few remaining human users of Facebook, or for porn, or mass surveillance. “Coders” are using it to generate millions of lines of “Garbage Code”, and so far, no company has seen a saving vs the human workers they fired and laid off. When this “AI Bubble” finally pops, trillions of dollars of everyday Americans savings, 401k’s and other finances will be ruined. Already, people are pushing back against the attempt to force “AI” into everything, from search engines to office programs, on phones and cars and every other type of devices. Over 150 Mathematicians Warn Governments Not to “Believe the Hype” About AI There is currently a strong commercial incentive on the part of the technology industry to overstate the capabilities of their products,” the declaration reads, advising policymakers to “consult with experts, including mathematicians, in forming policy decisions rather than relying on press releases or popular reporting of mathematical results.” Worse yet, AI models may produce convincing-sounding solutions that don’t actually withstand scrutiny. The document also noted there were plenty of other reasons to call for regulatory oversight beyond the field of mathematics, noting the AI industry’s “involvement in military and mass surveillance programs, development of technologies which promote misinformation and undermine democracy, and environmental costs.” In short, it’s a ringing denunciation of the persistent hype surrounding AI, and a call for reining in its use that reverberates far beyond the world of mathematics. The broader scientific community has been reeling from a flood of papers that make heavy use of AI, risking contaminating the peer-review process with hallucinations. It’s also a pertinent reminder that AI models are being trained on cutting-edge research, often without sign-off from the original authors. AI slop can bite the hand that holds it: Meta Says 20,000 Instagram Accounts Hacked via AI Tool Abuse Hackers compromised many Instagram accounts simply by asking Meta’s chatbot to link their own email address to the targeted account. This enabled the hackers to reset the account password and take control of it. Many high-profile accounts were reportedly compromised and sold on the dark web. The list of impacted accounts included those of the Obama White House, Sephora, and US Space Force Chief Master Sergeant John Bentivegna. Some cybercriminals shared videos and instructions on how the attack worked. Microsoft recently announced major pricing changes for GitHub Copilot — changes that were drastic enough that a Reddit user said their company has started calling it the Tokenpocalypse. This whole ecosystem is heavily, heavily subsidized by investor money. And so stuff that seems like it has no cost is, in fact, incredibly expensive. And now we’re going to get to a point where more of that cost is going to get passed on to the end consumer, to the customer. How is that going to change behavior? I don’t think we know, but there’s going to be a lot of pain. Every time an AI chatbot or agent issues a response, it is measured in “tokens” – building blocks of language that can be words, punctuation marks or syllables. (For example, OpenAI says the phrase “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” is worth 11 tokens.) It also uses tokens to measure inputs, such as the prompt you type into ChatGPT. The costs of these vary per model; OpenAI prices it at $5 a million input tokens for GPT-5.5, and $30 a million output tokens (ie the response given to your prompt). The problem for subscribers is that token costs are going up massively, even as companies everywhere are encouraging employees to “tokenmaxx”, that is, really go hard on using AI. The problem for AI companies is that they still aren’t charging enough. We will post a follow-up to this article.
