Special Edition: 'Not In My Backyard' - Backlash Against AI Data Centers

**Nicol Turner Lee** (0:00)
I heard this one woman say, this was my dream house, and now outside my window is a big data center.

**Erica Mandy** (0:07)
Today is Saturday, August 22nd. More and more, people are realizing that artificial intelligence doesn't just live on our phones, in a chat bot, or even just somewhere in the cloud. But behind all of it, there is very real, very physical infrastructure going up around the country. And in some communities, it is suddenly hard to miss and causing everyday disruptions. So as tech companies race to build more data centers to power AI, people across the country are asking new questions, from how much electricity and water these buildings actually need, and who will be left with the costs and consequences, to whether data centers really bring new jobs and benefits to the communities where they're built, to even, does my daily chat bot question contribute to any harm caused? Today, we're joined by Dr. Nicole Turner Lee, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank, the Brookings Institution, and director of its Center for Technology Innovation. She's also the founder of the AI Equity Lab. Today, she helps to answer the questions and explain not only why the data center boom is becoming a very real issue for communities across America, but also what can be done about it.
Welcome to the NewsWorthy special edition Saturday, when we sit down with a different expert or celebrity every Saturday to talk about something in the news. Don't forget to tune in every Monday through Friday for our regular episodes, where we provide all the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy, it's now time for today's special edition Saturday.
Nicole Turner Lee, thank you so much for joining us here on The NewsWorthy.

**Nicol Turner Lee** (1:35)
Oh, thanks for having me.

**Erica Mandy** (1:37)
So first, let's just make sure we're all on the same page. When we hear about these enormous AI data centers being built all around the country, what are they actually doing? And why are tech companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build more and more at this point?

**Nicol Turner Lee** (1:50)
Yeah, that is a big question that I think most people want the answer to. We data centers have been around for quite some time, so I want to make sure people understand that this is not something that's happened in the last six to eight months. We've actually seen data centers before when it comes to cloud computing, enterprise software management. It just so happens that these data centers are coincided with the increasing use of AI.
So if you're using generative AI or you're streaming videos, the argument that's being made is that we need more data centers to accommodate all the demand. A data center is this big space with no windows, and inside are chips and these server nodules that are essentially needing to be cooled 24 hours a day and are needing electricity to stay on.

**Erica Mandy** (2:37)
It's a great point that data centers aren't new, but because they're needed for AI, we're seeing them just expand at a much bigger level than I think we have before, is that right?

**Nicol Turner Lee** (2:49)
I'll put on my policy hat for a moment. The United States has a competition with China, and as a result of that global competition, there's a desire to be first, particularly when it comes to the big tech companies that you probably all have heard of, that are amassing these data centers to ensure that they can stay much more competitive globally in this race. So I want to just be clear, I think we think that all data centers are big. They're not necessarily all big, but we need these data centers to actually pair up our compute infrastructure, which enables all of us to do the things that we are doing online each and every day.
Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia, where I live, that's where I'm in the same boat with everybody else, that these are interesting moments for us to really examine what these data centers are, particularly when they get closer to residential communities.

**Erica Mandy** (3:39)
So let's talk about the resources that they do use before we get into the specific complaints. And you've said before that people might not realize just how much electricity and water that they require. So explain it for us.

**Nicol Turner Lee** (3:52)
Well, we know right now that data centers are expected to sort of extract 12% of our energy resources by 2028 Some people are already feeling some of this with regards to increase utility bills. I mean, these buildings, they require power. And so at the root of a data center's execution is obviously having access to electricity because they need to plug in somewhere. And normally that's within your community. Water is equally massive with regards to the ability to cool down that hardware that is going 24-7. So if we've ever been a situation where we've seen hardware go continuously, it overheats and cooling is very important to data centers, which is why there's a huge consumption in water. There's really not great research on how much water is consumed, I have to admit. But these numbers are expected to grow as these data centers extract more and more from people's energy resources.