- Monterey Park becomes the first city to ban the construction of data centers
- Elsewhere, public opinion turns against data center construction
- There are concerns about electricity costs, pollution and use.
In addition to developing new models and boosting subscriptions, AI companies have something else to worry about: building enough data centers. The Californian city of Monterey Park just became the first to ban the construction of these processing centers, amid growing concerns about costs, energy use and pollution.
The vote from Monterey Park citizens was also quite emphatic: The Guardian reported that 86.3% of the community wanted nothing to do with the data centers. Ballot issues included protecting air quality, clean water, public health, and electricity and water rates.
There is growing evidence of the damage data centers can cause to the environment, creating local urban “heat islands”, producing noise pollution from diesel generators and air conditioning systems, and using large volumes of water to keep everything cool.
At the same time, as cloud computing and AI demands increase, these data centers are increasingly needed. The researchers call for more to be done to improve the ecology of data centers, particularly by reducing water use and recycling waste heat, as well as by positioning them further away from built-up areas.
This is something the tech giants are trying to work on, but how much progress they’re making is unclear: At the same time Microsoft is promising big efficiency gains in data centers, it’s also getting into trouble for needing too much electricity for its operations. At the moment, promises and reality do not quite coincide.
‘The biggest problem’
First, a California city votes overwhelmingly to permanently ban data centers from r/technology
While Monterey Park has become the first city to implement an outright ban, many other areas have moratoriums, essentially halting data center development. It seems that public opinion is turning against these constructions in general: 71% of Americans are now against a data center in their neighborhood.
In recent weeks we have seen famed activist Erin Brockovich begin to track the expansion of data centers across the United States. According to Brockovich’s figures, there are now more than 4,200 data centers in the country dedicated to meeting the demand for AI, and while AI is not the only use for data centers, it is currently the main reason they are built.
“Who wouldn’t want to have a large-scale industrial polluter in their backyard?” is a Reddit post that sums up the general mood online, with other commenters calling for “aggressive regulation” and describing it as “the biggest problem in the US right now.” There are also concerns about AI in general, including its potential effect on the labor market.
A separate report from MarketWatch says that more money is now spent in the US on data centers than the government spends on transportation infrastructure (excluding highways and streets), another telling statistic that we are at a truly critical time for AI technology and the economy on which it is based.
“All we want is healthcare and high-speed rail and all we get is a chatbot telling us there are no R’s in ‘strawberry,'” one Redditor suggests, reflecting the prevailing sentiment right now (at least outside of the AI bubble). The problem is not just the expense, but it could be well spent elsewhere.
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