The moral panic over data centres is foolish
economist.com
economist.com
Ad-hominems in an Economist article. This reads more like an opinion piece than reporting. There are plenty of documented problems with water usage of data centres. Some can use it efficiently but it costs more to do so and many (most?) do not.
We are also in a time when most people would prefer to use that water for drinking, washing, cleaning… basically anything except data centres.
Don’t think many people are going to read this and think, “Gosh, I was a fool!”
But it does offer AI narration.
Are we calling TTS "AI" now?
People have artificially intelligent vaccuums these days.
My personal criticism of data centers is mostly regulatory failure. The tech companies are choosing random ass states and stealing land from poor farmers instead of the traditional data center states like Virginia mostly because of tax breaks. The local government is just as if not more responsible for the issues with data centers. It's easy however to just point fingers at big tech instead of he underlying market failures in a lot of the states. The traditional data center states almost always have a supply of clean energy and water with a proper regulatory framework.
Its pretty obvious here that people decided datacenters were bad first, then went looking for justifications second.
If you think the current data center installations have problems you want to be addressed, you don't also bring up golf course water usage, farmland water rights, residential lawns, factory runoff, and climate change effects on rainwater. You'd just be distracting from the conversation.
I've not seen a single state where anyone is trying to build a ton of new golf courses. There are around 140 being built in the whole country, and I think the most in any one state is under a dozen in Florida.
There are more than an order of magnitude more data centers under construction with some states having more data centers under constructions than the whole country has golf courses under construction.
I bet if you tried to build 2-300 golf courses at the same time in one state it would become an issue for state level politicians.
Look, just say what you mean. If you think "AI is BAD" just say that, don't try to couch it in some disingenuous argument about water usage or climate change.
The person I was replying to was trying to make inferences from the fact that data centers have become a statewide issue in some states but golf courses have not.
My point is that because golf courses are being built at a much lower rate than data centers they remain just local issues in most places. Try to build 200 golf courses at the same time in some state and I bet you'll see that get statewide attention.
Even with the massive data center build out, existing golf courses today use more water than all projected data centers globally are expected to use in 2030.
The water issue is completely farcical.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Also, the "pollution" from data centers is just "major construction project temporarily disrupts water table" not "facility is pumping random chemicals into the water".
That is to say, nothing about next door neighbors to a major construction project getting mud out of their well for a little while is unique to datacenters.
I did not say that golf courses are pollution free, but there is many degrees of magnitude difference between the mere possibility of illnesses becoming more common around golf courses and data centres that have to pay millions in fines as they are not following the rules.
I feel like you're constructing straw men arguments here despite the very obvious polluting behaviour of datacentres.
The difference here is that data centers are both economically and environmentally extractive. People in the community, or at least in the surrounding area, will play golf there. Data centers are purely extractive, and that's why they have become so galvanizing. It's transferring probably the only real asset these communities have left, their open spaces, directly to the elite.
please, tell me more
> people in the community, or at least in the surrounding area, will play golf there
going to go out on a limb here and guess that net-net, a datacenter provides more benefits to a broader spectrum of society than a golf course does.
What is the exact value proposition of AI as it exists right now for the average person who lives where these things are being built? They don't even get jobs. With golf, they can enjoy the outdoors and escape a little bit.
The golf park isn't even the best natural-adjacent use of the space.
A regular park or a trail will service a significantly larger portion of the population than a private property that transfers wealth from the community to a single person or corporation.
Well, you're right to be uncertain. After they're built, once the crews that built them move on to the next one, they don't even bother to keep the lights on. They might hire private security guards to patrol the exterior, but that's hardly an infusion of capital into the community.
> The golf park isn't even the best natural-adjacent use of the space.
> A regular park or a trail will service a significantly larger portion of the population than a private property that transfers wealth from the community to a single person or corporation.
Ok. Then they can decide to build a nature trail instead. The local community should make the decision and not be coerced because someone from the coasts thinks that they're a minor annoyance that needs to be lectured on the future of humanity or whatever lessbad rational-du-jore is being peddled.
Is that true locally though? Having a golf course nearby your home is better than the golf course just existing somewhere, at least if you play golf, but that is decidedly not true of data centers. You might benefit from at least some of them existing, but derive very little benefit from having one in your backyard and a lot of potential downsides.
Isn't that the standard NIMBY argument, which ensures nothing ever gets built? Who wants a power plant, or dump near their house? Even if there's some vague local benefit (eg. a dump that benefits the county), you could always make the argument to put it on the other side of the county or whatever.
The hate for data centers is a liberal thing, not a "leftist" take. Although, being against golf courses should be supported by everyone. Golf courses suck.
That is the style of articles (interpretive analysis) that The Economist does.
[1]: https://www.kitchenaid.com/pinch-of-help/major-appliances/di...
Given that my sink cannot contain 20 gallons of water and that I do not even fill my sink full to do my dishes by hand, I cannot possibly be using 20 gallons of water to do my dishes when I do my dishes by hand.
BTW many people have water running constantly while doing the dishes.
[1]: https://www.epa.gov/watersense/start-saving#save-indoors
They might, and even probably often do, but not always.
If the intent is genuinely water conservation, it is important to understand that there may be situations in which the dishwasher is not the most conservative option.
As expected - that source rarely publishes anything else. Here's another pearl [1], where they're rejoicing over the kettle's burned color.
In both cases The Economist is totally blind about the economic foundations of the problems and there's no hint of a solution.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49580174 America has a whopping debt. But Europe has the whopping debt problem
That is not what is indicated by consumer behavior.
Though it isn't healthiest, people prefer sugar water and so the sugar water companies have been able to afford to acquire water rights and they have driven up the cost of water.
Drilling holes through aquifers and not capping them, over-grazing and over-tilling, and wasteful industry production processes have driven up the cost of water.
Given a low-enough energy cost and basically unlimited salt water from the oceans, we shouldn't be out of water. There should not be coastal water scarcity.
Golf course, chip factory, almonds, fracking, lawns, swimming pools, or purple pipe golf course water?
This is worth money. It is worth a lot of money to solve the AI data center sustainability problem. And, solving the AI datacenter sustainability would preserve the AI value multiplier in other sustainable process redesign efforts.
> We need to use AI to solve for global warming.
It's actually imperative;
"Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49576124#49578556
- One person lives in a world where people have applied AI (the smartest tech we have) to solving for datacenter impact and broader climate change objectives.
- The other lives in a world where they use AI to expensively generate infotainment videos (and for example statements about lack of political will) but not solutions that solve for cost and sustainability.
And those people are stupid or to be charitable "ignorant."
Full stop.
I'm not trying to be an ass here, I mean it genuinely. Those people are ignorant at best. Email runs on datacenters, Google runs on datacenters, netflix needs them. Delta airlines uses data centers to route flights and host their massive amounts of data (and so do all the other operations out there). The NWS is using super computers (and big data) to predict the weather. The good, the bad, everything runs on giant clusters of data centers, compute, and power. How many datacenters host the most popular steam games and movies? Indeed, the very message of "Data Center BAD!" is hosted on data centers. You think this wild anti-progress ideology could exist in a world without them? Of course not.
Our modern life is enabled by these damn near miraculous technical tools and the people screaming about water or anything else are seldom against the things that they like. Plenty of people shit-talk data centers then go fly to Paris on vacation. Plenty of the same people water their lawns and drive to work when they could walk. In my experience, "DATA BAD" is just code for "AI BAD" - they're really against AI. You talk to these people, and the same thing always comes up, "well, AI is bad for artists" or "AI is going to take over all the jobs" or something along those lines. It's always some scifi fueled Yudkowskian fever dream or fear of losing their jobs or "Elon/Bezos/Gates/Whoever = BAD!" Very little of it is based in any sort of actual evaluation of the world.
And I'm not necessarily arguing with them on these guys being jackasses. But the world is not just a black and white thing typically, and the complaints about all of these changes (and that's what all this is, a fear of the new and complaints about change) are reactionary grasps yearning for a prior era. It's terminally (and ironically) online people complaining that they can no longer find meaning in an increasingly competitive work place. It's fear!
I've now seen this with many people I know. I've seen this in a huge amount of online spaces. I've seen it in the real world. This is "millenials getting conservative but not realizing it." It's people being afraid of change. Watching the biggest pirates I've known suddenly talk about "defending artists" and strengthening copyright is amusing, but it points to a bigger problem. People being unwilling or unable to adjust to change and it is at it's core a conservative mindset despite the liberal (not leftist mind you) costume it wears.
Logic and reason aren't going to convince these folks of anything, they didn't get to their views with logic, they're not going to logic their way out of them. It's modern liberalism's version of climate denial, and it's literally a reactionary way of viewing the world.
To your point, very few of these people are likely to read the economist and think "whoa, I was wrong." You're spot on there - but I also don't think that people know where their water comes from, their food comes from, their power comes from, their Net Flix comes from, their medication comes from, or really anything else. They're thinking "I DON'T LIKE X, X NEEDS Y, THEREFORE Y BAD!" That's it typically.
The radical leftist position should be "seizing the means of computation" and "man the barricades, this is OUR data center now!" Not, "WE NEED BETTER LAWS TO PROTECT PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE SPACE OF IDEAS TO PROTECT JOBS MAKING LOGOS AND WRITING AD COPY!" This is millenials getting older and confusing reactionary nostalgia for "a better world."
Millenial here, hello. Yes, we were the biggest pirates, because we had no means to buy the music we liked, period. CDs were kidney-money (if the album we liked available at all), digital distribution was non-existent and cassettes were sounding worse than first generation shellac records in some cases.
I personally bought most of the music I used to pirate. I buy the eBooks I like, and keep a backup copy for myself. Heck I even hounded a CD from a disbanded group for a couple of years and ordered it online because the music was good and they deserved another sale.
Because for us, piracy was about the service at first. We went to concerts, bought merch, etc. to support them.
Also this brings me to the second point: You miss the point entirely about datacenters & AI datacenters. Second, you miss the point between AI, the tech and the building of AI the tech.
First, datacenters are nothing new, and nobody is opposed to "normal" datacenters. The difference between a standard datacenter and AI datacenter is almost night and day (power density, compute load, hardware portfolio, etc.). I always talk about AI datacenters, because I work at a datacenter. I know how these things can be made more environmentally friendly, but no, everybody has to move fast and break things. In this case, we're mostly breaking down our planet, accelerating water stress and global warming related side effects while destroying livelihoods of communities as a whole.
Second is AI as a tech vs. how it's built as a tech. Heck, I'm not even opposed to copyrighted works used as training data, many of us want consent. Control over whether their works are used for training or not. Not compensation, not money, but consent. Not to be seen as slave of these AI providers to feed them.
For artists, compensation is their right. Have you ever composed music, or performed even? Do you know how much effort goes into doing this (hint: We used to rehearse for 10 hours/week for 14 weeks to give a 90 minute concert)? Watch this [0] if you want some insight how a single song is assembled over ideas, takes, tries with blood, sweat and tears. Same for writing. Did you read Hyperion Cantos, Lord of the Rings, Neuromancer, Zones of Thought, etc.? I mean, even the fact checking in Ready Player One could easily take a year. These books created worlds, changed minds and the authors of these books and others deserve some fair compensation for this.
You may find graphic design, art and photography mundane, but when you're not taking selfies and shooting stories or taking videos of a concert which you won't be able to enjoy because of the video-grabbing session for likes, these can be very powerful mediums for storytelling or getting your message across.
Not everyone is against AI as the tech. I am not. I have developed agent-based systems with emergent intelligence before people knew the term autonomous agent.
Yes, we need better laws to protect property rights in the space of ideas, but not to solely protect the jobs, but TO PROTECT THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMANS AND THEIR FREEDOM TO CREATE AND OWN THE THINGS THEY HAVE CREATED.
"You'll own nothing and be happy" is a drug to make masses comply, and unfortunately, you're apparently one of the flag carriers of that crowd.
This post is written with a real brain, approximately 10 fingers, at 1x by a physical human you can talk with.
Compare data centers to refrigerators. But almost everyone likes refrigerators
Compare data centers to dishwashers. But many people like dishwashers
Compare data centers to almond trees. But many people like almonds
It goes on and on
If people really liked "AI" the way they like golf, refrigerators, dishwashers, almonds, etc., then data centers might be an easier sell
I don't think this opposition to data centers is "environmentalism", it has too much broad support. I think this is simply lack of enthusiasm for "AI". Silicon Valley and Redmond can effectively force people to use certain software but cannot make people like it
This third era of "AI" is probably going to end like the last two; reality will ensure this
Arguments for or against notwithstanding
Generations of them already know how
I would not be so sure, this article seems pretty comprehensive in questioning these supposed problems: https://andymasley.com/writing/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake/
I agree that the growth of new data centers could be problematic in some areas especially as the infra build-out ramps up. But as many sibbling comments imply, that water can be put to much more economically valuable tasks in data centers than other, drastically more water-hungry uses like golf courses.
The title already gives it away, calling it a “moral panic”. Casting your opponents as some sort of brain-damaged cranks is such a tired trope.
US electricity is 40% more expensive since 2022 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU000072610
Some AI datacenters can indeed be heard a mile away https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/28/datacenters-...
Amazon's new Texas AI data center could become the biggest CO2 polluter in the US https://www.techradar.com/pro/amazons-new-texas-ai-data-cent...
Relative to data center growth, the correlation doesn't match - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/monthly-spending-data-cen...
More analysis here - https://www.wri.org/insights/whats-driving-us-electricity-pr...
But TL;DR - sounds like in the northeast / PJM it's load increases, in North Dakota increased load is causing drops in prices, California it's mostly from wildfire mitigation + insurance, natural gas oscillating across the US is causing price changes as well.
The water is mostly part of a closed system. Sure, you need a lot to build one, but once it's running it's pretty water efficient. The lack of green power is a problem, but as the article points out, you now have a large customer subsidizing the base cost of delivery, since they are only one delivery point, and they are financing new sources of power, which if properly regulated would be green power.
The noise is an issue, I will admit that. As is the fact that a lot of the power is coming from non-green sources. But the government could easily fix these problems with regulations that apply broadly, not just to datacenters.
(This is part of why I no longer help build them, because when I asked about reducing noise and using green power I was laughed at).
It seems with all the other battles to fight, that moving it 2km down the road and surrounding it with trees and parkland would knock the noise argument out of the window. At least in the US and Australia that really do have vast amounts of open space.
Like.. you came in invalidating the people, then, when called out, you say what is effectively "well their criticism is actually right".
And.. That's that. I guess. Are you sure that you're taking part in the conversation and not just stringing words together based on probabilities?
I think this is the core of the 'moral panic'. it isn't anti-AI, it's the fact that many AI datacenter builders have been somewhere between surreptitious and intentionally illegal in their avoidance public knowledge of what they are doing, most likely to avoid exactly the regulation you're recommending. As a result, there's now categorical public distrust of both the industry and the local government that has shirked their obligation to the public welfare.
It is reasonable to conclude that you don't act as secretively as these builders have unless you have something to hide.
> In any case, even the noise worry is overstated: many viral videos of supposed AI data centre noise are really Bitcoin mines, not state-of-the-art hyperscaler facilities.
Are there really major differences between a hyperscaler, neocloud, and crypto mining data center in terms of noise pollution or other negative effects?
Most regular people have not been sold on the idea that more AI will be good for them or their families or communities personally. Instead all they hear is AI taking away jobs, and AI preventing high schoolers and college kids from learning how to read a book and write an essay. Most people think a world with more AI seems bleaker.
So people wonder why communities don't want this hulking, loud, energy-expensive data center whose main benefit is to hasten the arrival of this world they don't want?
Isn't AI the only way we get to that? Who is gonna do actual important work otherwise?
Instead the evidence of our own eyes tells us that AI seems to be worsening the K-shaped economy: a handful of Elon Musks will become trillionaires, a slightly larger number of engineers will become billionaires, and the rest of us will have fewer jobs and fewer prospects of upward mobility in a world where AI can do most entry-level work.
If you need your job to feed your family then what Sam or Dario is saying is quite literally a threat to kill your children.
Of course they’re full of shit, it’s more like a very useful business automation project but if you say stuff like that you can’t be surprised when people hear it and form highly rational opinions about it.
You don't get to pick and choose what productive technologies to adopt. You either adopt them, or you'll be paying the countries that do and you'll still lose your domestic industry to competition.
It could make economic sense to be the world leaders in the next drug that turns everyone into mindless worker drones ("if we're not making the factories that make the drugs the Chinese will!") but people still won't be happy about what it means for their futures.
Until AI proves a systemic risk to humanity there would be no similar consensus on shunning its use, and the economic spoils go to the countries that adopt it.
Soooo
You're building them, and you're agreeing that the biggest points of criticism are valid.
But.. some handwaving that the government should do something about it and also others are too doing bad things.
And your conscience is clear, huh?
Talking to just a few people or one person at a time can help a lot, also.
But I hear you. It sucks trying to be helpful and then getting it shoved in your face.
They are powering it with turbines right, so if its next to your house it sounds like you're permanently in on the airport tarmac. Not great. I saw a video (not on the internet, but from them). It was pretty annoying. But it makes sense, there is no way a power delivery system in a developed country adapts so fast to such intense energy needs. Here in india, many 250Mw datacenters are put in places where a proper grid connection is itself coming for the first time, so the same problem is not there. And frankly there are way more noisy industries in poorly zoned mixed-industrial-residential areas here for generator noise to even matter.
You even note the problems, but then wave them away saying that "the government could fix them."
So have the government fix those problematic regulations first, and then the AI centres can re-apply for permission.
But what people are most upset about are water and power, which are the two least problematic things about datacenters.
* use a lot of water to build one
* the power is a problem
* the noise is an issue
* the power is coming from non-green sources
* the government could “easily” fix all this with regulations
Also can you tell us which chemicals need to be added to the outer and inner loops of the systems, and do the inner loop has the same losses or it is different.
If there's water loss into the ground, and if the water is treated with chemicals, is it required or is it in fact treated to remove these chemicals so the used water can be reused for livestock, agriculture, or non-consumable use in the cities like for watering greenery or other processes which needs water but can accept non-potable variety.
I also heard that there's a closed loop version for outer loop. Is it used widely in US, if yes, what percentage of the large datacenters use it? Because as I heard it, it's more expensive, but doesn't lose water as much.
Adding some references if possible is greatly appreciated so we can dive deeper, as the community.
Same is also valid for power usage metrics. I'm especially interested in how a datacenter full of 800VDC systems (aka Megawatt Rack) can be fed without any difficulty with our current power generation and transfer infra.
If it doesn't, we can all stand around and make fun of the people who paid terabucks for the data centers, and enjoy a bountiful harvest of surplus hardware for pennies on the dollar.
OTOH, considering the proliferation of the EVs, greenhouse gas emissions from cars are going down, alongside brake-pad related emissions since generative braking covers 90%+ of the daily braking needs.
OTOH, many datacenters are installing their own greenhouse emitting power gensets. So, with a bitter contrast, as AI is replacing jobs, it's also filling back the carbon footprint vacated by cars and more efficient modes of transport at the same time.
These GPUs won't be scrapped soon, because besides AI, they are useful for accelerating not-so-precise floating point calculations en-masse. So, no, it won't work as you imagine.
And here we are, talking about the US. Great, that's settled.
OTOH, considering the proliferation of the EVs, greenhouse gas emissions from cars are going down
In the US, most electricity comes from carbon-based sources. EVs help, certainly, but it would still be best from an ecological standpoint if people didn't have to use them every day to get to work.
OTOH, many datacenters are installing their own greenhouse emitting power gensets.
Exactly, which is why we should work for grid renewal and expansion at the same time we build these things out. If the hyperscalers insist on building their own power plants, those power plants should be required to be (a) carbon-neutral; and (b) grid-tied.
These GPUs won't be scrapped soon, because besides AI, they are useful for accelerating not-so-precise floating point calculations en-masse.
Really. What are some other applications for not-so-precise floating point calculations at the exaflops level?
Proliferation of law skirting AI datacenters is a worldwide problem. Many companies are extending this to Europe as well, so AI datacenters is not a U.S. problem only.
From what I see in Electricity Maps[0], it's not clear cut. Some of the states have well over 50% of their generation is from carbon-free sources. As a general trend, west is greener than eastern US. So, no, EVs will have an impact there. However, you need electric semis a lot as a country since rail is not used a lot in the US as well.
> Really. What are some other applications for not-so-precise floating point calculations at the exaflops level?
In short, HPC. As a more detailed, by short list:
- Weather and climate modeling.
- Drug discovery.
- Computational Fluid Dynamics.
- Material science, behavioral and process analysis.
- All kinds of large scale simulation which can be modeled with matrices.
- Any kind of problem requiring linear algebra.
I manage HPC clusters, and sometimes develop code on them, so yeah.
[0]: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-PACE/live/fif...
(IMHO, the fact that AI models tolerate absurdly-low precision means that we're doing something wrong and wasteful in our entire computational approach to the field, but that's neither here nor there.)
Except when some rich clown from another country comes into a drought-stressed desert area where residents have already been under increasingly draconic water usage restrictions for goin' on a decade now, wantin' to build a datacenter right on a lake that's already under severe stress with record low water levels, tellin' everyone it won't have any effect on anything and it's all just rainbows and sunshine and nothin' but benefits for everyone all around (lies). But yeah, no worries. We can surely trust the billionaire wouldn't lie to us to enrich himself at our expense.
But that's more expensive to operate.
So most of them don't do it.
Show me actual statistics that a supermajority of new and proposed datacenters either are currently using (for new), or plan to use, with clear financial projections for how (for proposed), closed-loop cooling systems, and I'll consider conceding this point. Until and unless someone can do that, you can point to the option of such systems until you're blue in the face, but it's meaningless.
Even if you can get legislators to pass regulation, enforcing it is a constant battle, and odds are they'll just pay a fine and keep on violating the regulations.
It's a much easier fight to keep a DC out of your community to begin with.
Isn't that just the definition of left or right leaning? People who don't listen.
We have an entire generation of young people that went to college and got a degree hoping that they would be able to get a good job and live a comfortable life. However, that's not the case anymore and the fact that almost all entry level jobs are replaced by AI has created this sentiment among people that somehow AI is evil.
The problem is not that AI is evil, but most of the people would have to learn new skills and adapt because the profession or job they trained at college doesn't exists anymore.
Data Centers have existed way before mainstream AI. Everyone would binge watch the latest season of popular shows of Netflix and won't even bat an eye thinking how much water that has wasted.
isn't the problem then capitalism? the promise of AI is to deliver efficiencies, leverage, and consequent surplus. AI does not itself allocate the surplus.
Nope, capitalism is not perfect, but it has lifted billions of people out of poverty and elevated their living standards. The hatred towards capitalism is as irrational as the hatred towards data centers. If you really want to find something to hate and blame all your problems, then blame it on corruption and incompetent politicians.
The reasons people give are higher electric bills, water shortages, and environmental damage.
I think that those reasons are spurious but I also think that for some issues facts don't make much difference. People will have opinions about things that are totally at odds with facts.
just an anecdote but what exactly do local residents gain here? a handful of permanent maintenance jobs?
No. Permanent sleep deprivation and probably tinnitus. It's sad, really.
Poorly designed cooling infrastructure is indeed noisy. There are lower noise versions exist, but they are expensive, and I don't think they can be that quieter to make a difference at that scale.
Of course. Esp. for the bigger datacenters which generate their own power and release large amounts of emissions to the atmosphere.
It's good that that air never moves and all this emission stays inside the cube formed by the ground, four borders of the datacenter and personal airspace ceiling prescribed by the governments.
Given that the datacenter operators run air purifiers and give the filtered out emissions to government (or licensed 3rd parties) for conversion to carbon credits, there's no harm done.
Just some local noise nuisance, and maybe some heat, but all of them are manageable. Residents can use earplugs and more powerful air conditioners to restore or surpass their previous life quality.
This is not only progress, but how one changes the world for the better.
The issue right now is the boom of data center building has them being built wherever approval can be had, rather than in more reasonable industrial locations.
It's reasonable to not want a data center built next to you in the same way it's reasonable to not want an iron smelter or pit mine built next to you. There are reasonable places to build data centers, pit mines, and iron smelters and it's not residential neighborhoods. Building them in residential neighborhoods anyway because they can, is what is forcing this issue to a head.
That and water usage building them in places with water issues. There are a lot of places in the country that don't have water issues. Data can be moved around the country quickly. The problems are solvable, but the builders are more interested in chasing short-term dollar than solving them. The opposition should hopefully reshape the construction into a more reasonable reality.
There's a lot of examples of companies failing to deliver things they promised at this level like the FoxConn complex in Wisconsin. Making city leaders sign NDAs doesn't help this. People are more skeptical of future tax revenue claims and it's hard to sell a direct benefit of the AI itself when you spent two years talking about eliminating all white collar jobs. The trust just isn't there.
Given the classical liberal philosophy of The Economist, this just reads like scolding when their world-view is falling out of favor. Luckily for AI boosters, I think data center builders are adapting to reality.
There’s a few in my area that have huge green space around them as per local government and I’d love to live near them…. You got big open green space, trees, wetlands. One I know of is home to Sandhill cranes every summer.
Just do the thing, right.
The rest of us pay higher and higher electrical bills because of data centers.
Data centers create jobs during construction but few jobs after.
Strategically, though, the US is cooked if we don't keep ahead of the pack.
Hell of a tradeoff.
But I think the effect will be that the companies building them will "sweeten" the deal for the local towns where they are building -- probably by way of taxes. And while that will be a drag on their development (by adding costs), the scale won't be bad enough to really hurt.
And in that sense, everyone wins. The locales will be happy to have the extra resources. And the ones that don't take the "bribe" -- or whatever you want to call it -- won't get datacenters.
(But I do agree that panic is overblown and counterproductive.)
Yes. And datacenter companies have to foolish to slow-walk doing this. When you are building a 10 to 50 billion dollar construction project, it may be worth giving the local town 100 million (plus 10k directly to every resident) to do with as they please, and it would certainly grease the wheels.
This is mostly an America problem right now because that is where everyone wants to build the DCs and it's the market with the most stagnant generation: https://en.macromicro.me/collections/26367/electricity/14247...
https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report-state/state-l...
https://www.edweek.org/technology/rising-use-of-ai-in-school...
First of all, there are reasons apart from pollution, rising electricity prices and global warming:
These things make noise. Noise bad. Noise very bad for health. Maybe if post from Economist or Spectator villa no know noise!
Thanks for your attention to this matter and please continue to eat cake.
"The moral panic over data centres is foolish, filthy peasants!"
People fucking hate you and don’t trust you and are convinced, not without reason, that you have the specific goal and intention of destroying their way of life and ability to provide for their families. They also feel like they were never consulted in any of this and that nobody is representing their interests.
You can agree or disagree with that point of view, but unless you thrive on ignorance you might as well get your head around the fact that it’s likely a majority view in this country by now.
Consider for a moment trying to figure out why that is the case rather than pretending it’s not true or that it’s a mass delusion.
You seem to have a problem with capitalism. Not AI or datacenters. Capitalism isnt working right now. Ask for that to be abolished. Don't point your finger at a genuinely useful and accessible technology.
That's worked great for the datacenter misinformation so far.
There's not even an author on this article.
But you can listen to an ai narrated version of it.
The Economist has anonymous writers for almost every article.
“A backlash fuelled by misinformation and misunderstanding” is also just an academic jargon term for “my vision is superior, anyone who disagrees is out of stupidity, if they understood me they would agree.”
Sure sounds like foolish moral panic. Many of the responses here so far would be perfectly at home on bluesky.
People like my dad with no technical knowledge at all read an article in some rage-bait newspaper and it must be true (like foreigners took all your jobs, and the left-wing government wants to tax all your money and give it to scroungers).
If people are not taught how to ask "how often is this true" or "how much is this true" or "will this always be true", then they will fear whatever they are told to fear.
The irony of this that it portrays everything referred to as a moral panic as something worthy of legitimate worry and/or outrage that was brushed aside by more influential socioeconomic groups.
Which now makes me wonder how many of the examples listed here qualify.
If I'm understanding you correct.
Therefore any argument about them being "not so bad" in the water/noise/energy department is worthless. You can't Spock your way out of it. People feel AI, in its current incarnation (A tool of the oligarchy), only brings negative value to the world. Hence they're opposed to its avatars, like datacenters or the anti-features popping in every app and websites.
lol
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I suspect the data center thing has become popular because it's been a long time since people have felt like they can effect change in government policy. Details and nuance are irrelevant, there are larger, underlying forces at work
In other words, since the USA endlessly debates everything, you might as well put out messaging that creates more FUD so that it opens up more chances they'll believe anything.
The dissonant mental state fuels the consumption that drives the economy.
Are they excited? Or do they just not have political control at a local level?
People in China are also generally more excited about progress since it has actively improved their livelihood and wealth over the last few decades rather than slowly eroding it like it has in many Western countries. The government there makes legitimate investments in very visible and beneficial public works projects. Why would you be unenthusiastic about progress when you've been getting subways and high speed rail and cheap luxurious EVs everywhere for the last 20 years?
I find this article incredibly weak, glossing over a number of legitimate concerns brought up by data center opponents. This sentence in particular is pretty egregious:
> In any case, even the noise worry is overstated: many viral videos of supposed AI data centre noise are really Bitcoin mines, not state-of-the-art hyperscaler facilities.
Really? You think people are building Bitcoin mines, in 2026? Please.
Let's also be clear here: AI data centers could be a wonderful thing if we had a government that was legitimately focused on shoring up the national grid, transitioning to renewable energy, and building nuclear power plants. You know who is doing that? China: with more nuclear power plant projects underway than the rest of the world combined.
Instead, the US has an administration that started another middle east war for no reason resulting in higher oil prices, cancels renewable energy projects and permits left and right, and seems hell-bent on moving backwards in every way possible. Electricity prices in many states have gone up by double digit percentages. I don't see that happening in China. I don't blame anyone for being against data centers, even if it is "FUD."
The actual issue, as far as I see it, is the financialization of capitalism. When businesses prioritize creating value to the shareholders over creating value to the society, people naturally care less about their success. The degree of financialization also varies from country to country.
There are a lot of fools out there, and their favorite recreational activity, besides being fooled, is voting.
No datacenters isn't about AI or even resources like water or power, it's mostly about real-estate and housing prices as usual.
If we listened to NIMBYs we would have no new infrastructure, no high density housing, no public transport.... oh wait.
I wonder, do you know how much energy or water is required to run a datacenter with direct liquid cooled systems?
Not the SOTA AI data centers which are popping up like mushrooms, a general ballpark is enough.
This is not a loaded question. Given your knowledge, you must be knowing much more than majority of HN.
Back when I was running my own startup I moved to Mascot, Sydney to be near Equinix SY3 that was being built which we had bought a decent chunk of committed capacity in. Mascot was originally an industrial area but was gentrified a lot over the last 20ish years but the datacenters, meat packers etc are all still there. It really adds to the charm of the place in a lot of ways, warehouses/factories that have been converted to cafes and breweries. Which is to say I don't think living near a DC is bad at all, they aren't very loud and they just look like big warehouses with lots of lights, cameras and no windows. Oh and security dudes.
Anyways. Yes. The hardware I am working at $DAY_JOB is all direct liquid cooled. The coolant that actually cools the hardware is closed loop, it's not expended. Which means you don't actually use any of it and it's considered good for the entire life of the hardware.
I normally don't directly talk about $DAY_JOB things because there are pretty strict rules so I can only use publically referenced sources but you can read a little bit about the coolant we use in this article [1].
The facility loop though is usually what people are worried about. A lot of datacentres that were built in low humidity environments use evaporative cooling which does indeed use a ton of water. However most data centers in more humid environments don't and either use loops that recycle the water but dump the heat (i.e rivers/lakes) or use closed loop systems with radiators etc. It's worth mentioning though that evaporative cooling is extremely power efficient vs most closed loop solutions so there is a tradeoff here. I don't think Google could achieve their fleetwide PUE (Power Usage Efficiency, basically measurement of how much power goes to things in a DC that isn't a computer) numbers without relying on it heavily.
Given the difficulties getting DCs approved in much of the world right now and the backlog on generation capacity (i.e power) almost all modern DCs are being built to use as little water as possible.
To give you an idea I think evaporative cooling of the type you would find in a state of the art Google DC with a PUE of ~1.1ish might use 1-1.1L of water for every kWh of actual equipment load (this is a back of the napkin estimate, don't hold me to it).
Conversely true closed loop will use approximately zero.
So yeah, evaporative is a big waster of water especially at GW scale.
1: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/nvid...
I'm personally not interested in the details that you can't provide, that was not something I was aiming for, but putting a ballpark number for ~1.1L/kWh is very eye opening (I know it's not some accurate figure, but yeah). Considering a SOTA GPU uses somewhere from 700W to 2.5kW depending on the manufacturer and performance level...
Now I'm wondering how the dumped heat affect these water bodies (i.e. rivers, lakes, etc.). Their relative heat capacity w.r.t. this amount dumped heat can't be infinite so they can handle this forever.
Hope to meet you someday. Have a nice day! :)
I like Copenhill (https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/planning/copenhil...), where they decided that waste handling is not nice so why not make it nice by building a ski slope on it. I suspect that a bit more creativity could make people want data centres (free heating and hot water anybody? Hot spring baths? Free hosting for local schools and charities?)
It’s only NIMBYs and YIYBYs
Also see the Green parties / Greenpeace and the decline of nuclear power stations. We could have had clean, cheap energy across Europe and America, but the fear of nuclear is fully embedded in the public psyche.