AI Data Centers Are Consuming Memory Chips Needed for Pacemakers and Brake Systems

The chips used in ai data centers process information. The chips used in pacemakers also process information. The same silicon can do both jobs. Nvidia and other manufacturers are producing chips primarily for ai. Hospitals are experiencing shortages of pacemaker chips. The market decided that ai training generates more revenue than keeping people alive.

Allocation by price works until it doesn't. This is not a new pattern. During the pandemic, ventilator production was insufficient. During the chip shortage, car production halted. What changes each time is which thing we decided was less important than something else. Nobody optimized for this outcome. The incentives simply arranged themselves this way.

The shortage will either resolve through price increases so severe that ai companies redirect to other chips, or through deaths among people who need pacemakers, or through government intervention. One of these is least disruptive to markets. Two require people to experience the consequences of allocation structures they did not consent to.