Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has called for the breakup of large technology companies, citing concerns over increasing prices and unchecked corporate power, particularly in the context of global chip shortages exacerbated by the demand for artificial intelligence.
News that a major tech firm, identified as Apple, may soon increase prices on devices like phones and laptops due to a strained processing chip supply chain prompted Ocasio-Cortez's remarks. Apple's outgoing CEO, Tim Cook, recently stated that price increases are becoming "unavoidable" as the company attempts to mitigate climbing costs passed on by suppliers. "We’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable," Cook said.
Companies like Apple have long dominated the demand for processing chips, essential components that enable devices to perform calculations and process data. The escalating demand from AI companies has intensified competition for a limited supply of these sophisticated components, driving up costs for manufacturers. "We need to break up a lot of these companies that are far, far too big and we need to be instituting consumer protections for people," Ocasio-Cortez stated.
Ocasio-Cortez also suggested that Congress should re-examine its approach to mitigating the costs associated with the AI race, specifically addressing the energy demands of data centers. She indicated that the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act, signed into law in 2022, was not designed to anticipate the massive supply requirements of AI data centers. The CHIPS Act allocated billions for modernizing the energy grid and incentivizing domestic semiconductor production but did not directly address the energy consumption of data centers. "The CHIPS Act was passed before we saw this huge development in AI, so the CHIPS Act was really passed before data centers were a thing, so it wasn’t designed to anticipate the huge amount of supply that these centers are sucking up," Ocasio-Cortez said.
She further contended that subsidies are currently being provided for aspects of these AI data centers, suggesting a need for greater government oversight and intervention in the burgeoning AI sector. "We are subsidizing a lot of these pieces of these AI data centers," she added.