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The EPA Is Planning to Scrap Public Review Rules for Data Center Pollution

The EPA plans to eliminate mandatory public review of air-pollution permits for AI data centers and their power plants, reducing community input.

The EPA proposes scrapping a federal requirement that states notify the public and accept comments before approving air-pollution permits for industrial facilities, including AI data centers and their power plants. A related proposal would let developers begin construction before permits are approved. Nearly 200 advocacy groups and more than a dozen states oppose the changes; critics cite health risks, rising utility bills, housing displacement, and disproportionate impacts on Black communities in the rural South, while the EPA argues the changes speed permitting. The proposal is expected to be finalized within the next year.

What must happen for AI’s trillion-dollar gamble to pay off

Hyperscalers need 2.7x productivity gains by 2030 to justify nearly $1.1 trillion in AI data center spending, or risk bankruptcy and capital misallocation.

Wharton finance professor Jessica Wachter estimates hyperscaler AI expenditure will reach nearly $1.1 trillion through 2027 and that a 2.7x productivity increase is needed to break even by 2030. AI revenues of roughly $150-200 billion this year fall far short of about $750 billion in annual spending, with total investment from Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle potentially exceeding $5 trillion over four years. Alphabet reported its first free cash flow deficit (about $5.9 billion) since its 2004 IPO due to AI infrastructure costs. Researchers warn that failed demand could make the buildout the largest capital misallocation in history, with depreciating GPU chips risking stranded assets.

MIT Technology Review · AI · 1d agoAI industry

OpenAI just wants to win

OpenAI says roughly 10,000 agents and tens of millions in compute solved the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem in 88 hours, amid controversy.

OpenAI claims an advanced unreleased model, run with about 10,000 agents and tens of millions of dollars of compute for 88 hours, produced a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, one of seven $1 million Millennium Prize problems set by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster, who was pursuing the problem with Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge, accused OpenAI of racing his team and of possibly benefiting from his Codex prompts; OpenAI categorically denied both. OpenAI researcher Sébastien Bubeck acknowledged offering Buckmaster compute and authorship arrangements, which Buckmaster characterized as a bribe, while many mathematicians expressed unease at OpenAI's competitive conduct.

The Verge · AI · 4d agoAI industry 2 sources1