Something Both Sides Are Concerned About
Editor's note: This essay was drafted without use of AI.
Nexus. That sweet spot where all roads intersect. Think of data centers as one of those intersections, as well as the energy provider that lets you google the plural of nexus. Nexuses? And decide against using it.
They’re all the rage this year, those data centers and the Artificial Intelligence they make possible. You may have noticed the ads on Facebook or YouTube.
- The new hire is an Excel expert and can produce the info for the boss in 3 days, but the smart employee sneers that she can have the info in 4 hours.
- Or how about letting AI turn your selfie into Iron Man at the flip of a switch? Wow! Cool!
- Or produce a meme of Trump as Christ. Less cool.
At the same time, objections to data centers and AI have risen. And they actually are a nexus of issues across the spectrum of citizen concerns. And political identities.
- AI may reduce research time and produce life-saving cures for current and emerging diseases. Speedy! Accurate?
- AI may replace many, many ‘thinking jobs’ such as writing legal briefs, editing books and papers, writing books and papers, illustrating concepts, drawing cartoons. Acting. (Your face, my voice, and his words, e.g.)
- AI may write smarter programs that can both design and drive smarter robots, taking more skilled jobs off the market.
That’s just the start. AI is probably, as we write, ‘thinking’ of new ways AI can replace slower, more demanding humans.
To do that at speed requires massive computing ability. Banks of computers, terabytes of data running on terawatts of energy, requiring cooling if they’re to carry on. These are housed in ‘data centers.’ We’ve had them for a few decades, but not at the density and scale currently being developed.
But what’s the beef? Well, data centers as they’ve been built so far, result in:
- Thousands of acres, drawn usually from farmland, because it’s cheaper, and built over.
- Water for cooling. Initially, this has been sucked from local sources, lowering the table for everyone else. Centers may or may not pay for the water.
- Discharge of used cooling water into local streams, sometimes polluting (additives?) and raising temperatures that affect aquatic life. Local residents express grave concerns about muddying their ground water and point to tap water that has become undrinkable.
- Enormous demand for electricity. This has in some cases raised local consumer rates as power companies invested in new infrastructure ... and asked customers to help shoulder the expense. Really? More recently, data center developers have generated their own electricity, too often with gas-fired power plants on site, producing local air pollution.
- Renewable energy seems too expensive to have been added into the blueprints. Scan the many photos of data centers and try to find even one solar panel on a roof. See any wind generators in the photo? No?
- And then there’s the 24/7 noise pollution – the whine/thrum of whirling dynamos -- affecting both nearby residents, livestock, and wildlife.
Add one more caveat here. Devices are shrinking. The mainframe is now a desktop. Your smartphone is a wristwatch. How many years will a 90-acre data center still be needed? Then what?
For investors, not unlike that ‘new hire’ in the ad, the lure is strong. Invest now, you’ll win. Wait and you’ll lose the opportunity.
Canny advisors point out the opportunity has pretty much already been bought up by those tech-oligarchs who plotted this course to begin with. They got in while we were still wondering what AI was. They’ll own arable land or rights to same years into the future. They’ll sell shares as soon as enough naïve investors get in to spike the price, and then sell and move on to some other ‘opportunity.’
And if the centers become obsolete, those without local agreements for ‘removal’ will simply move (without the re-). And leave the locals to clean up the mess.
One final boondoggle to consider: Data center developers and the investors behind them roll into town, seeking tax incentives (breaks) for the wealth they claim to bring. They claim to produce high-paying jobs! And for the 90 days or so of construction they do bring jobs. Consequently, so far, they've been getting some support from building trades unions.
After that, the centers pretty much run themselves with a skeleton crew of maintenance workers and a few techs. We’re talking maybe 15 jobs, after one gets running. Then, jobs stagnate, tax base from property and income taxes is flattened, the incentives mean even less comes in, and the community is left to fend for itself. A tech revolution with potential to do great good is, for now, a cash cow running loose.
The upside is that people are catching on. Resistance to data centers is spreading across the US and people on both sides of the political spectrum are working together to slow down the rampage. In a few states, groups have organized to bring ballot issues, banning the centers. Other states and/or municipalities have voted in moratoriums till the beast can be studied and tamed.
It is an issue where a range of issues meet = Nexus: jobs, tax base, community services, schools, health, property rights, jobs, energy costs, environment, future.
Can we talk?
References:
Data Center Watch
https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report
New York Becomes First State to Stall Hyper-Data-Centers
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14072026/new-york-first-data-center-moratorium/
Stop Dirty Data Centers – a project of the NAACP
https://naacp.org/campaigns/stop-dirty-data-centers
The Lincoln Project – Erin Brockovich: Big Tech Is Draining Your Town Dry for AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRI_oSa41z8
Erin Brockovich Data Center, site with map overlays looking at data center distribution across the US, and more.
https://brockovichdatacenter.com/
ConserveOhio – a statewide effort to get signatures for a ballot issue banning large data centers
https://conserveohio.com/
To be fair (Really? Why?)
American Energy Institute pushing back against ‘leftwing’ groups seeking to block their progress
https://americanenergyinstitute.com/docs/aei_data-center_report_v2.pdf