~by Colleen O’Brien
My daughter and I were driving along a freeway in the middle of Ohio when we saw half a dozen extremely long buildings, a whole mile of them. Behind the windowless structures was what looked like a couple square city block’s-worth of a tightly arranged power plant of hundreds of energy clusters – wires, cables and towers surrounded by coils of concertina loops.
As we left it behind, we decided it was a data center, one of those places that keeps track of millions of computers that work together to process, store, and share information (data). We’d seen a couple before this that could have been centers but none so massive.
According to Cleanview Data Industry Tracking, in the U.S. there are 4,469 data centers: 1,143 operating, 543 under construction and 2,513 planned. You may run into other tracking businesses with different numbers, but they all add up to about the same.
According to datacentermap.com, the top three data center states areVirginia 716, Texas 595, California 301. Iowa has 122 data centers sprinkled into the three major population areas of Des Moines, Council Bluffs and Cedar Rapids/Iowa City.
Data industry requires bringing coal fields out of retirement and encouraging expansion of natural gas plants. This behavior has the hardy, ecology-loving Sierra Club damning the undoing of 15 years of greenhouse gas reductions from U.S. electricity generation; this on top of an administration aggressive in blocking or slowing sustainable energy infrastructure of wind and solar brought on by former President Joe Biden.
Two-thirds of data centers have been developed on arid land in the West. There is no doubt why investors are eager to land in Iowa with its stable location between two major rivers and directly south of the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.”
Minnesota has 80 data centers because of its abundant water and cool climate. Unlike other states eager for AI, Minnesota is concerned about their growth. Moving slowly, the population elects legislatures that pay attention to the amount of electricity necessary, keeping water tables abundant and ecology in general safe.
Incessant building of data centers is projected at 4.7 million construction jobs. But they are temporary. The labor shortage that results once the centers are all built will then continue with only 350,000 to 500,000 thousand skilled workers needed in-house nationwide. Each center will be hiring a dozen to 200 permanent personnel. These hires will be Information Technology (IT) technicians and security guards who will run day-to-day. [Center for Global Development]
I figure humans will be replaced in these workplaces. Doesn’t it seem only logical that computers will soon operate themselves as well as cameras and lasers needed to guard against break-ins?
Do you remember Issac Asimov’s collection of short stories– I, Robot? OrArthur C Clarke’s novel made into the movie “2001 Space Odessey, in which Hal, the computer, takes charge? Is it machines, not humans, that win in the end?
As AI in general is explained, digital infrastructure of computers is invisible because Artificial Intelligence is a technology that simply accumulates data – words, pictures, voices, facts, music – and eventually with enough input recognizes patterns and “learns” to make decisions or solve problems much like a child’s human brain does. Compters are not irrational, lazy or mean-tempered like humans. They may be greedy, however, for information.
Economic and environmental impacts are already monumental from existing data centers that provide warehousing for computing and automation for businesses adopting Artificial Intelligence. One Microsoft data center in Des Moines employs about 600 people and has sites scheduled for development, which I suppose means a great deal of space and a few more employees. Meta employs 400 people nearby. Apple, in Waukee, 50. All centers require a massive workforce during construction but need minimal staff once built.
The physical toll runs 24 hours a day for processors’ (computers’) tendency to overheat. Centers accelerate demands on water and energy. They create electronic waste and pollution. They grab up farmland. In many areas, concern increases: noise, residential electricity rates increasing 30 percent and more, as well as water rates doing the same, and strain left behind on existing infrastructure such as streets, highways and bridges during construction.
Data industry delays retirement of coal fields and encourages expansion of natural gas. This behavior has the hardy, ecology-loving Sierra Club damning the undoing of 15 years of greenhouse gas reductions from electricity generation; this on top of an administration that has made outlaws of sustainable energy infrastructure — wind and solar — brought on by former President Joe Biden.
We have awakened into a future imagined by writers before us. AI-necessary data centers sneaked into towns before residents realized what was going on. Now, many a town refuses centers or demands they pay their own water and fuel and receive no subsidies or delayed taxes from governmental agencies.
Data center folk insist that our private information — bank accounts, credit cards, healthcare cards and more — is safest in a data center. Really? It seems to me that Information Technology is and always will be subject to invasion by clever technicians, human and robotic, outside and inside the alien space of data centers.
