Massive data centers pose many concerns for communities, humanity
Editor:
Almost two hundred years ago the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, “He who fights the future has a dangerous enemy.” The future, he said, takes shape within us, from our individual and collective fears, and then appears outside of us as an enemy.
Those of us with legitimate fears about issues like the mad proliferation of data centers in our country can be so easily dismissed as prisoners of our fears (or NIMBY’s, or Luddites), regardless of the validity of our concerns. We have to keep the philosopher’s words in mind, and be careful and thorough in our arguments.
The proliferation of data centers is a growing national concern. It’s all over the internet; you can’t swing a digital cat without hitting an anti-data center article. There’s a growing demand for a national data center moratorium. It’s interesting that the list of national concerns is mirrored almost perfectly by our local concerns about the proposed data center at the STAMP site in Genesee County.
We are facing a proposal for an $11.2 billion, 2.2 million square foot behemoth using 500 megawatts of electrical power, enough to power all the homes in the city of Rochester, plus all the homes in the 4-county GLOW region.
The proposed tax abatements: an unbelievable $774 million. That’s tax money that New Yorkers will never see. All this for 125 permanent jobs (“permanent” being a relative term, since the lifetime of data centers is typically in the 10-15 year range.). That works out to $6.2 million in tax breaks per job, a ridiculously high number. Add to this the expectation that the data center will likely get cut-rate hydropower from Niagara Falls, and financially this looks like the mother of all one-sided deals.
As if all the above were not bad enough, the location of the data center, surrounded by protected, environmentally sensitive lands and abutting the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, is very problematic. Air, water, and noise pollution are the risks that the local population must bear (along with higher electric bills).
The fundamental problem is that data centers are extractive entities, sucking up resources (land, electricity), generating almost zero permanent employment, channeling the wealth from their operations away from New York State to some of the world’s richest corporations, and offloading the risks onto the locals.
There is a bigger picture. Data center madness is itself driven by the mad race by tech companies to develop AGI, or artificial general intelligence, a technology that has the potential to radically disrupt modern society. Fantastic riches and fantastic power await the corporate winner of this race.
Right now there’s an AI financial bubble, a mismatch between the level of investment (enormous) and the financial returns (tiny so far). The bubble may burst, which would be terrible for the US economy, or it may not burst and we will be thrust into a new, very different future. In either case, the technology will still be there and will eventually be adopted.
AGI offers fantastic upsides as well as terrible risks. It will lead to massive increases in productivity in areas like the service sector that currently dominates our economy. This could lead to massive white collar unemployment.
It will likely be instrumental in developing cures for terrible diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer. It could also lead to a massive surveillance state, a precursor to a totalitarian state. It may revolutionize education, especially in underserved areas. Over the next five to fifteen years it will hit our society like a freight train.
The drivers of this grand game (Musk, Altman, Cook, Bezos, Pichai, and others), all brilliantly intelligent people, seem to lack the will, motivation, or wisdom to provide a coherent vision of a decent future for all human beings. They apparently cannot escape our current economic culture, where amassing riches and power is the only goal.
Capitalism is the greatest system ever invented for generating wealth, but it is truly bad at distributing wealth. Uncontrolled, it breeds savage inequalities. We’re on that road right now, and it’s safe to say that the lives and livelihoods of Western New Yorkers are of little to no concern to the cash – and power-hungry tech bros running the show.
Returning to Kierkegaard, we need not fear the future, but we do need to act in ways to ease the shock. We need to build a society that places more value on all human beings, a society with greater empathy.
Some time ago Bruce Springsteen was on tour, and he sang the Woody Guthrie song, “This Land is Your Land.” He said that he wasn’t sure if the message of the song was still true, but he knew that it ought to be true. Then he said the song reminded him “…with countries, just like with people, it’s easy to let the best of yourself slip away.”
Don’t let the best of yourself slip away. The proposed local data center is a bad idea. Oppose it.
Also attack the root of the problem: Do what you can – read, learn, discuss, argue, and make your voice heard – to help shift the inevitable but currently aimless AI paradigm onto a more humane path. Easy? No. Doable? Maybe.
Dave Giacherio
Kent
