For all its potential benefits, artificial intelligence isn’t cheap.
In fact, even if you don’t use AI, it is probably costing you money without you realizing it—by contributing to the nation’s current affordability crisis and high cost of living, which is due in part to higher inflation, stalled wage growth, and higher prices, CNN reported.
“Higher inflation means that households must spend just over $375 more to purchase the same goods and services as they did this time last year due to AI’s inflationary impact,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNN.
Some of those higher costs include a spike in electricity bills, computer prices, and construction costs, not to mention overall job loss.
Higher electricity prices
AI is creating higher electric bills in the United States, as energy-intensive AI data centers strain local power grids and utility companies pass on that cost to consumers.
Unlike previous technologies, artificial intelligence requires a massive amount of computing power. Data centers consumed an estimated 4.4% of all the electricity in the U.S in 2023, and that percentage could more than double by 2030, according to a study from MIT Energy Initiative.
Job loss
It could also cost you your job: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) forecasts AI will replace 10% to 15% of all U.S. jobs in the next five years alone.
Looking even sooner, in the next three years, BCG estimates AI will “reshape” between 50% and 55% of U.S. jobs.
“What people do in these jobs will be different, even if the job is still there,” BCG managing director and senior partner Matthew Kropp told CBS News.
Construction costs
The massive rush to create thousands of data centers has rapidly increased the demand for construction work, diverting it from building homes and causing a strain on supplies like electrical wiring and copper, which hit a record high earlier this year.
Computer prices are up
AI is also the reason the price of your laptop just went up.
For a long time, computer prices were falling—but a recent spike in laptop, desktop, and smartphone prices from Apple and Microsoft is the result of a memory chip shortage, according to Yahoo! Finance. AI data centers require massive amounts of high-bandwidth memory, and with only three major RAM manufacturers, it’s draining the chip market.
