The ecological cost of AI data centers

Byline: Javohir Aminov, News Editor

Data centers are often talked about in today's climate, with wide controversy on its effects on politics, AI and the overall community. Data centers are facilities that use large amounts of energy to deliver, build and run applications and services like AI or websites.

These centers also store photos and videos on storage drives and have cooling and air conditioning built in to prevent overheating and allow these operations to work efficiently. However, these data centers require an abundant amount of electricity for it to work, raising controversy of its negative effects.

Ongoing debates have explained how these modern data centers for AI have been using 50 megawatts of electricity. Yet the owners will soon increase the size of their complexes, making them use up to 4,000 megawatts according to earthjustice.org. Such amounts of energy are harmful to the environment since it tarnishes clean energy and increases pollution. Since AI data centers need up to five million gallons of water on a daily basis, it depletes the water supplies for municipal or regional public water resources.

The environment isn’t the only thing that's dealing with the repercussions of AI data centers; the people are as well. The air pollution that is emitted from these centers has been predicted by experts to increase healthcare costs by $21 billion in just two years. The Environmental Protection Network says that the data centers will cause approximately 600,000 asthma cases and 1,300 premature deaths.

In addition to the harmful nature that AI data centers bring, it is also causing a divide among the Democratic Party. On one side of the argument, Democrats argue that data centers bring tax revenue into their communities, and on the other side Democrats oppose this by citing the environmental ramifications. Furthermore, residents of Virginia, Texas and California are voting those in power out of office who favor the construction of data centers, claiming that they care more for the data center developers than their community.

Advocacy for the banishment of AI data centers has been shown as well, with Gallup News showing that seven in 10 Americans oppose the construction of data centers and a poll by The Economist and YouGov shows that two–thirds of Americans also oppose the construction of them.

There are also advocacy groups like Earthjustice that help communities that are affected by data centers, defending their finances and clean resources. They also fight against developers to ensure that they improve their energy usage and do not corrupt clean resources while trying to get states to pass laws so that people don’t pay the price for the consequences of data centers.