[nairboon]

That would be a highly bureaucratic solution with significant overheads. Would everyone pay extra tax per kWh or just AI computers? Tax it on the producer or consumer side? How would you verify that a particular data center is "bad computation" and needs a different tax rate on its energy usage.

Should an AI data center from pharmaceuticals or biotech startup be taxed extra per kWh, even if the AI is purely used for medical research?

[nextaccountic]

Just big AI datacenters. If this encourages people to run local AI, all the better.

> Should an AI data center from pharmaceuticals or biotech startup be taxed extra per kWh, even if the AI is purely used for medical research?

That's not a gotcha.. those are all policy choices. My personal preference is, yes, of course - medical research today is taxed just fine. If there's lobbying to specifically grant tax benefits to medical research, I can see an exception being carved.

[delaminator]

You think multiple localised heat centres are more efficient than centralised managed heat centres. Why don't we all just have a coal-fired power station in our back garden?