Google is perversely incentivized to send traffic to sites using their ad placement services creating demand for what they are supplying.
Sending someone searching for information to sites without ads enshitifying the experience breaks the business model Google depands on.
Now scraping the content to use in “AI summaries” without attribution? That seems likely.
@58008@lemmy.world I recently read a developer compare AI to lead pipes or asbestos… something that seemed cost effective at the time, but ended up being a REALLY bad idea. Communities are already realizing that the power and water required for this are not compatible with human life in the same place and the market reflecting the cost of increasing electric production.
Being “off grid” was something only peppers did, but as connection fees increase and battery technology improves, it makes less financial sense to keep residential homes connected to subsidize data center consumption.
Elon’s work around for the lack of cheap electricity for his data centers has.been methane. While the US is a top methane producer, the next 3 countries are Russia, Iran and China. The cost of methane is impacted by global conflict the same way gasoline prices are.
While the efficiency of data centers will increase, so will awareness of the impact these facilities have on the places they are built and the toxic ewaste they generate driving up their costs.