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- Monterey Park becomes the first city to ban data center building
- Elsewhere, public opinion is turning against data center construction
- There are concerns over expense, pollution, and electricity use
As well as developing new models and pushing subscriptions, AI companies have something else to worry about: getting enough data centers built. The California city Monterey Park just became the first to ban the building of these processing hubs, amid growing worries over costs, energy use, and pollution.
The vote from the citizens of Monterey Park was pretty emphatic too, with The Guardian reporting that 86.3% of the community wanted nothing to do with data centers. The issues mentioned on the ballot included the protections for air quality, drinking water, public health, and electricity and water rates.
There's growing evidence for the harms that data centers can do to the environment, through creating local urban 'heat islands', producing noise pollution from diesel generators and air conditioning systems, and using up large volumes of water in order to keep everything cool.
At the same time, as cloud computing and AI demands grow, these data centers are increasingly needed. Researchers are calling for more to be done to improve the eco-friendliness of data centers, particularly in reducing water use and recycling waste heat, as well as positioning them further from built-up areas.
This is something the tech giants are trying to work on, but the amount of progress they're making isn't clear: at the same time that 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, the promises and the reality don't quite match up.
'The biggest issue'
In first, California city overwhelmingly votes to permanently ban datacenters from r/technology
While Monterey Park has become the first city to put an outright ban in place, many other areas have moratoriums in place, which essentially put a pause on data center development. It seems public opinion is turning against these constructions in general, with 71% percent of Americans now against a data center in their neighborhood.
In recent weeks we've seen famous activist Erin Brockovich start to track the spread of data centers across the US. As per Brockovich's figures, there are now more than 4,200 data centers in the country dedicated to supplying AI demand — and while AI isn't the only use for data centers, it's currently the primary reason they're being built.
"Who wouldn't want a large-scale industrial polluter sitting in their backyard?" is one Reddit post that sums up the general mood online, with other commenters asking for "aggressive regulation" describing it as "the biggest issue in the USA right now". There are also concerns over AI more generally, including its potential effect on the jobs market.
A separate report from MarketWatch says that more money is now being spent in the US on data centers than the government spends on transportation infrastructure (excluding highways and streets)— another eye-opening stat that we're in a real crunch time for AI technology and the economics it's based on.
"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'," suggests one Redditor, which reflects the overriding sentiment right now (at least outside of the AI bubble). It's not just the expense that's the problem, it's that it could be well spent elsewhere.
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