Mark Zuckerberg Bites

His Fingers Over Bees

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia –Global technology giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are racing to find nuclear energy sources for artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing data centers. However, their efforts have encountered various obstacles, including from bees.

The race between technology companies to build AI technology platforms requires the support of new data centers specifically designed for the technology. AI data centers also require a larger energy supply than regular data centers.

Therefore, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are reportedly aggressively seeking nuclear power plants to provide energy sources for the planned data centers.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon, has reportedly encountered obstacles in its AI data center construction project next to a nuclear power plant.

The Financial Times reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that one of the obstacles to the project was the appearance of rare bees on the project land. In the United States, bees are classified as a species that is vulnerable to extinction due to, among other things, the use of pesticides.

Amazon’s hyperscale data center construction plan has also stalled. The United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has rejected Amazon’s plan to build a data center next to a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

FERC’s reason for rejecting Amazon’s plan is the potential impact of Amazon’s data center’s electricity consumption on the quality of service for other electricity customers in the area. Residents in the surrounding area are worried that they will experience more power outages and have to pay higher electricity bills because of Amazon’s energy-hungry data center.

On the other hand, Microsoft’s giant data center project is running smoothly. The company plans to revive an inactive nuclear power plant as a source of energy for the data center.

SOURCE : CNBC INDONESIA