Power Play

Nobody’s AI has gone down for lack of electricity. So why are we rushing to build more? The chips keep getting more efficient, and the plans being announced may run well ahead of what gets built. If the demand doesn’t show up, households pay twice: first on their power bills, then again in their retirement savings. Jackie Snow makes the case for slowing down. CREDITS:  Power Play is a production by Quartz and The Capitalist Hippie.  Reported by Jackie Snow, Catherine Baab, and Joseph Zeballos-Roig.  Hosted by Marco Pimentel.  Produced by Simon Litt.  Edited by Georgina Kemp Walker.

Even if Microsoft's Three Mile Island reactor was ready in 2027, it wouldn’t generate power until 2031. The gap is the grid, and the rules for who pays to fix it. FERC's entire mandate is three words: just and reasonable. Its June 18 orders split the fight across six grid regions, each told to make large loads pay their own way. Joseph Zeballos-Roig follows the rulemaking that surrounds the bill. CREDITS:  Power Play is a production by Quartz and The Capitalist Hippie.  Reported by Jackie Snow, Catherine Baab, and Joseph Zeballos-Roig.  Hosted by Marco Pimentel.  Produced by Simon Litt.  Edited by Georgina Kemp Walker.

The cheapest fix for AI's power problem is America’s power grid. That is, the one that already exists. A Brattle study puts the savings from running it ten percent harder at more than $100 billion. The fixes chasing that number run from dynamic line ratings to a five gigawatt-hour heat battery in South Dakota. Jackie Snow and six grid experts explain what keeps us from tapping into these solutions. CREDITS:  Power Play is a production by Quartz and The Capitalist Hippie.  Reported by Jackie Snow, Catherine Baab, and Joseph Zeballos-Roig.  Hosted by Marco Pimentel.  Produced by Simon Litt.  Edited by Georgina Kemp Walker.

Residents of Scioto County, Ohio, learned about their new $1 billion Google data center after the deal was done. The county gave up 75 percent of the property tax on it for 15 years. Historian John Reeves compares what’s happening today with what happened the last time America built at speed. Catherine Baab investigates the pledge signed by tech CEOs, which claims AI won't raise anyone's electricity bill. CREDITS:  Power Play is a production by Quartz and The Capitalist Hippie.  Reported by Jackie Snow, Catherine Baab, and Joseph Zeballos-Roig.  Hosted by Marco Pimentel.  Produced by Simon Litt.  Edited by Georgina Kemp Walker.

America is rebuilding its power grid for AI before anyone can agree on how much power AI will need. In Ohio, one utility held 30 gigawatts of data center requests. When it asked developers for money upfront, requests dropped to 13 gigawatts. Jackie Snow follows the phantom demand clogging utility queues, the decisions already being made on numbers nobody trusts, and who pays if the guesses run high. CREDITS:  Power Play is a production by Quartz and The Capitalist Hippie.  Reported by Jackie Snow, Catherine Baab, and Joseph Zeballos-Roig.  Hosted by Marco Pimentel.  Produced by Simon Litt.  Edited by Georgina Kemp Walker.

America's grid runs at about half its capacity. AI needs more power. What’s the problem? Every new data center waits on a connection study, and the studies are still run by hand. The turbines and transmission lines that would add capacity take five years or more to arrive. Jackie Snow traces the wait through roughly three thousand utilities, each working the problem alone. CREDITS:  Power Play is a production by Quartz and The Capitalist Hippie.  Reported by Jackie Snow, Catherine Baab, and Joseph Zeballos-Roig.  Hosted by Marco Pimentel.  Produced by Simon Litt.  Edited by Georgina Kemp Walker.

AI needs more power, faster than America has ever built it. Power Play is a six-part investigation from Quartz into the bottlenecks, the fixes, and the economics at the core of AI development. All six episodes are out now.

There’s a lot of money to be made in the business of sleep. Take sunrise alarm clocks, fancy mattresses, REM-tracking wearables, and monthly deliveries of melatonin. But should we really be investing this much in hopes of catching a few more Z’s? In the final episode of season 8, we consult a bonafide sleep doctor on the matter and get a physician’s POV on a few questions keeping us up at night: Why is there such a large market for catching some Z’s? Can any of these products actually help us find rest?  Why do we need to sleep? What’s happening in our brains and bodies while we dream? The Quartz Obsession is produced by Podcast Fast Track, with additional support from Jason Russum, Amy Perry, Liliana Zapata, Juan Palacios, and Lorena Caro. Our theme music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Suguira. This episode was recorded at G/O Media headquarters in New York.

There are contactless thermometers, the Nose Frieda, co-sleeping. Trends in parenting gear and childrearing practices seem to evolve at faster rates than other sectors, a speed exemplified by a single product: strollers.  While we’ve been engineering ways to wheel children around for centuries, stroller manufacturers can’t seem to stop iterating on their models. Strollers have become a status identifier, a repository for parenting anxiety, and an emblem of consumerism run amok. As doctors and experts gather new research and best practices in childcare, strollers exemplify how quickly it’s all changing. Strap into episode 5 and get the latest about this new movement in industrial design. The Quartz Obsession is produced by Podcast Fast Track, with additional support from Jason Russum, Amy Perry, Liliana Zapata, Juan Palacios, and Lorena Caro. Our theme music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Suguira. This episode was recorded at G/O Media headquarters in New York.

From Dubai to Dublin to Dallas and back, air carriers are cashing in on a big business: credit cards.  In fact, analysts note that growth in the sector “significantly outpaces the overall credit card industry.” One carrier alone can profit billions from its cards in a calendar year and, in tandem, build loyalty by tying them up in frequent flier programs.  Why did airlines build out a business line through these little scraps of plastic?  What’s the history of these co-branded cards?  How did credit rewards come to make sky-high profits?  Fasten your seatbelts and put away your tray tables as the fourth episode of season 8 takes off, with a co-pilot who’s made a business of this business: The Points Guy himself.