Almost No One Realizes This About AI Data Centers

The world is currently pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence. Corporations are racing to build it while governments compete to attract it, all on the assumption that this is the next industrial revolution.

But what if the biggest investment boom in decades doesn't actually create prosperity? If there's one place in the world where we can actually test that right now, it might be Ohio. For most of the 20th century, Ohio was one of America's great industrial engines. By 1945, the US was producing over 60% of

the world's steel, most of it from mills stretched along the Great Lakes. The city of Akron called itself the rubber capital of the world with Goodyear, Firestone, and BF Goodrich all headquartered there. When American manufacturing grew, Ohio grew with it.

But when American manufacturing collapsed, Ohio collapsed with it. The steel mills in Youngstown closed first, then the auto plants. [music] Between 1990 and 2016, the state lost more than half of its entire manufacturing workforce. Now, as AI reshapes the global economy, Ohio is once again right

at the center of the next industrial revolution. And maybe the best place we can look to see what the AI economy is actually going to mean. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Intel are all building enormous facilities on the state's farmland with more than $55 billion poured into 217 data center projects.

And at least on paper, it seems to be working. CNBC has ranked Ohio the number one state in America to do business for the first time in its history. It looks like the state is on the verge of its biggest comeback in generations. Except the average Ohio electricity bill has grown 53% [music] since 2021 against a

national average of 32%. The data centers also bring a fraction of the old factories did. And to attract them, Ohio handed out billions in tax breaks. Money that would otherwise have funded schools, roads, [music] and local services. So, what does it take to become a data center hub? And why did that checklist point

straight at Ohio? Do the data centers going up in Ohio today actually replace what manufacturing once gave [music] this state? And who ends up paying when the answer turns out to be no?

AI can be one of the most politically charged topics these days, and when reading about how it's progressing or if data centers are being built, it can be very hard to understand what is actually going on. When doing research for this video, I came across this issue more than once. That's why I use Ground News.

is an independent, subscriber-funded website and app on a mission to give readers a data-driven, objective way to read the news. Their platform helps me identify what's behind articles like this one, "Nvidia in talks with OpenAI to guarantee $250 billion in financing." The Ohio data center would

be one of the largest in the world. Ground News works by gathering articles from all over the internet and ranking them on a spectrum from left to right.

We can see this in action when we click on the bias comparison tab. It shows us that in this article in particular, the left-leaning articles treat the deal very straightforward, while the right leans more into absurdity using words like AI bubble risks and stating that they're overreaching. But, if you want