Good morning. Now that the holidays are nearly done and your shopping largely out of the way, be sure to check your upcoming credit card statements for purchases you don’t recognize. The reason: Scammers are using artificial intelligence to increase their fraud efforts and make them more effective.
Credit card companies have reported huge upticks in fraud attempts, according to the Wall Street Journal. Visa said it blocked twice as many fraudulent charges on its credit card network in the days after Thanksgiving versus a year ago, for example, while Mastercard said it blocked nine times as many.
The good news for consumers is that while AI may help criminals, it also helps credit card companies detect fraud. But the war is far from over.
Also, Fortune is hosting its annual Brainstorm dinner on January 6 in Las Vegas, in prelude to the CES trade show. We have a fabulous lineup of speakers including Mark Cuban, entrepreneur and cofounder of Cost Plus Drugs; Teddy Bekele, chief technology officer at Land O’Lakes; Sagar Mehta, chief technology officer at OpenTable; and Lauri Palmieri, senior vice president of solution engineering at Salesforce. If you’d like to attend, please apply. —Verne Kopytoff
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Netflix learns to play football
Netflix’s early efforts to expand into live sports streaming appears to be paying off. The two NFL games the service showed on Christmas Day set a new record for audience size, with each attracting an average of 24 million U.S. viewers, according to preliminary data from Nielsen.
A game between the reigning Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers drew 24.1 million viewers. The following one between the Baltimore Ravens and the Houston Texans, which featured Beyoncé as a blockbuster halftime performer, averaged 24.3 million people.
The previous streaming record for an NFL game was 23 million, set by NBC’s Peacock service in January.
Netflix has been taking baby steps in live sports in an effort to expand beyond its roots in film and television shows, and bring in more ad revenue from its free tier. But the push suffered a major hiccup last month when technical glitches disrupted a boxing contest between influencer Jake Paul and former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.
There were far fewer disruptions during Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL games. And considering that the audience for each game shown is expected to hit 30 million when international viewers are included, Netflix is celebrating as if it caught a last-second, game-winning touchdown.
Data center power drive
U.S. data centers are dramatically increasing their energy consumption, partly due to the AI boom. Demand for power by server farms is expected to triple over the next three years, to up to 12% of the nation’s electricity, according to a new report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The prediction highlights AI’s huge impact on the electrical grid. It also shows how the country must soon produce a lot more energy if it wants to keep up with the tech industry’s demand.
Rather than giving a definitive forecast for energy consumption, the report provided a range that reflects different scenarios for AI growth and the number of chips the tech industry uses. U.S. data centers, therefore, may require 74 to 132 gigawatts by 2028, or 6.7% to 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption, the report predicted.
As a point of comparison: Data centers now only gobble up around 4% of all electricity.
Worried about an energy shortage crimping their aspiration for AI, Big Tech companies have recently been pushing for more domestic energy production. One potential solution they’re promoting is more nuclear power, and some of those same companies are investing in startups developing mini-reactors.
Electricians are in demand
One profession is cashing in on all that data center construction: Electricians. Many of them are flocking to areas that are now ground zero for new server farms, according to the New York Times.
Electricians are critical to the operation of data centers because the equipment must be plugged in and connected to the power grid. With overtime and bonuses, many of these workers are clearing $2,800 weekly after taxes.
Of course, to cash in, electricians must often live in rural areas like Central Washington, where companies are pouring in to take advantage of cheaper electricity prices and tax breaks. And the jobs are often temporary.
Whatever the case, Big Tech is worried there won’t be enough electricians. Microsoft, alone, says it will need 2,300 of them in the near future.
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