A server room in a data center. A recent poll found more than 70% of Americans don't want a data center built near them. (Getty Images)
As the midterms approach, data centers are dominating the discourse. It’s a rare issue that most people actually agree on: A May Gallup poll found that over 70% of Americans don’t want an AI data center built near them.
The problems with data centers run deep.
It’s not just that they broadcast constant noise and keep the lights on all night, making the neighbors crazy. Or that they’re ravenous for electricity and water. Or that they’re inescapable eyesores to the people who have to live near them.
It gets right down to what these facilities are built to do.
They’re not like the mills and factories of an earlier America, which might have been ugly as sin and spewed smoke into the sky but at least provided jobs, woke up sleepy local economies, and made real products.
Instead, inside their gray walls, rows of processors nibble away at the world as we know it. They hum along, day and night, powering the AI models replacing human workers, filling the internet with slop, and facilitating mass surveillance.
Instead of producing cars or blue jeans — things we can understand and touch — these factories run the algorithms that have plunged humanity into the uncanny valley, fracturing our understanding of what’s real and human.
Not even the creators of this technology fully understand what it’s capable of or how to keep it in check. Unlike old-fashioned computers with their binary limitations, AI models sometimes go rogue. Last month, an OpenAI test model broke out of its sandbox testing environment, accessed the open internet, and conducted a cyberattack on another company.
“Move fast and break things,” indeed. Of course, no one wants a data center in their neighborhood.
But the billionaire technocrats have already barged through the gates, extracting our land and water to feed their machines and make themselves even richer. Local communities have little power to stop them.
The ball sits squarely in the Alabama Legislature’s court.
As John Sharp wrote recently for AL.com, our state operates under a model of limited home rule, which means local governments cannot assume powers not explicitly given by the state. It’s why, every year, the Legislature must spend time passing a long parade of local bills that don’t apply to most Alabamians. And it’s why county commissioners throw up their hands in despair when angry citizens confront them about data centers.
In lieu of local control, we have to look for answers at the state level.
First and foremost, data centers are eligible to receive subsidies that don’t make any sense in the current climate. In Alabama, data centers can receive both a general sales tax incentive and a property tax abatement (excluding education) for up to 30 years, per the National Conference of State Legislatures. This might be an acceptable trade-off for an industry that creates jobs, but most data centers function with minimal permanent staff. The only thing a community stands to gain from a data center is tax revenue. If we give up that money, we have nothing.
We also need a more robust regulatory framework for water usage, noise, and siting. In Texas, the second-biggest data center market behind Virginia, Gov. Greg Abbott this month announced that new data centers must pass a comprehensive audit before connecting to the state energy grid.
By contrast, while Alabama’s Public Service Commission has been tasked with making sure data centers don’t push up everyone else’s energy costs, it has no authority over a center’s water usage or other community impacts. That’s woefully inadequate.
Finally, local communities need the power to decide whether they want to host a data center or not.
Some counties might find the promised windfall outweighs the risks, especially in rural areas that desperately need money for education, public safety, and infrastructure. In 2018 Google opened a data center on the site of a former coal plant in Jackson County, in the farthest northeastern corner of the state. In return for the county’s hospitality, Google has contributed a running total of more than $1 million to local schools, and they’ve promised an additional $2.5 million to the community for student STEM kits and energy efficiency upgrades to homes and schools.
The relationship has been symbiotic enough that when Google announced plans earlier this summer to expand the Jackson County campus to the tune of $1.5 billion, they didn’t get much local pushback. It’s a case where the stars have aligned: The right site, plus enough local incentives to sweeten the deal, equal an agreement that seems to be palatable in this one particular corner of the state.
And that’s the point: Counties should be empowered to look at construction proposals on a case-by-case basis and decide whether they fit into the fabric of their communities.
The AI industry is creating tectonic shifts in an already fast-moving world. It’s overwhelming and maddeningly ephemeral, impossible to fully understand.
But we have a measure of control over the physical spaces that keep AI’s engines running. As it turns out, the cloud is not a cloud at all. It’s just a series of buildings, each with four walls and a roof and a plug that can be pulled. These buildings are not inevitable. They are the product of choices.
Choices that should belong with the people who would have to live with them.
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Catherine Dorrough