It feels like the United States gets more polarized every year, yet one issue has surprisingly united people of all political stripes over the last year: data centers.
In both Red and Blue states, there has been an overwhelming backlash against AI Data Centers. So let’s talk about what they do and why there is such a pronounced backlash against them.
So data centers are not an entirely new thing. They’ve existed in some form or another since the creation of the internet and have been used to manage cloud storage, email services, and productivity management. The difference between traditional data centers and AI data centers is largely scale.
AI data centers take up a lot of space, use a lot of resources, and require very few people to operate them. So while a data center may create temporary jobs during construction, once it’s up and running, it isn’t a meaningful source of employment in the community it’s placed in.
AI data centers need significantly more RAM than regular data centers, as well as graphics processing units (GPUs) and other computer chips. This massive increase in demand for RAM and GPUs, driven by AI data centers, has had a negative economic impact on the average consumer. The price of everything from computers, phones, tablets, and gaming consoles has continually increased over the last two years due to higher manufacturing costs.
AI data centers also have a pronounced, negative environmental impact on the areas they’re built. Elon Musk’s xAI is facing a lawsuit in Tennessee for building a series of data centers that have led to an increase in air pollution in the predominantly Black neighborhoods that surround it. Many AI data centers are being built in low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods, and there have been countless reports about the light, noise, and air pollution they create. These data centers often increase utility costs for the people who live near them.
Source: Here’s Why Everyone Hates AI Data Centers: An Explainer [Op-Ed]
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