Dónal and Ciarán are back to discuss some of the various costs of AI, as we reach the middle of 2026 and see the AI valuation bubble and its associated hype continue to expand. In this episode, the focus is on data centres - especially in Ireland - as well as a range of the costs of AI that demand our attention at a time when the focus is usually on the opportunities instead.

Topics in this episode:

• The environmental costs of data centres - in Ireland and elsewhere - as gas-fired electricity generation is needed to feed the growing demand for compute power
• The electricity costs for households in Ireland, linked to our national policies to become a data centre hub and a "cautionary tale" according to the UN
• The costs for jobs and discussion of recent job losses in Ireland's tech sector
• The increased token-based costs of using AI as subsidised usage decreases and companies and users get bigger bills
• The information and truth costs as AI contributes slop and summarises search results in new ways, often obfuscating sources and validity
• The social and democratic costs of AI misinformation, breakdown of public consultation and a bleak future of work

Resources & Links:

• Reporting by the Irish Times on Ireland being branded a "cautionary tale" in a recent UN report
• "Data centres have drained €715 million from the Irish economy" - The report from Friends of the Earth referred to in this episode 
• The Journal's excellent project tracking Data Centres (2025)
• Ed Zitron's discussion of Microsoft's Token Billing for GitHub CoPilot
• Axios reporting on ballooning AI-usage costs as token-billing ramps up
• &udm=14 - the parameter Dónal mentions that can be added to Google URLs to disable the AI-first version of search results (Tedium). Another related discussion on Tom's Hardware.
• Politico's reporting on the European Parliament abandoning Google as their search engine in favour of Qwant
• The Guardian's reporting on the senior Australian academic who used AI to author their "don't rely on AI" opinion piece. 
• Magnifica Humanitas - Pope Leo's papal encyclical on AI and humanity. 

You can get in touch with us - [email protected] - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions!