The nation’s largest tech companies aren’t slowing down their data center construction boom, despite uncertainty about when artificial superintelligence might emerge.
But if they’re wrong in downplaying the risk of an AI bubble bursting, those paying the price could be the Americans footing the electricity bills to make the grid upgrades that power-hungry data centers need.
No such worries appeared Wednesday on the mind of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said on an earnings call that he thinks the right strategy is to “aggressively front-load building capacity” — though he acknowledged that it’s “of course possible to overshoot.”
Worst case, he said, is “we effectively have just prebuilt for a couple of years … but we’d grow into that and use it over time.”
