The other day, I was at my volunteer job - basically, hanging out in the expressive therapy room in a large day shelter - and we started kicking around ideas for the title one of the art works. Our brainstorm was running on empty, when a fellow volunteer - a retired businessman who's roughly my age - decided to ask ChatGPT for a suggestion.
I kiddingly yelled at him - we've worked together for years, and I really like this guy - for using AI, but damned if AI didn't come up with a pretty good name for the picture.
Still, I stand by my opposition to using AI so cavalierly.
There are times and places for AI, but this - IMHO - isn't one of them. I keep trying to turn AI search off, but every time I think I've figured it out, Google manages to sneak it in. (It's been easier to turn of text predictions and Microsoft's odious CoPilot.)
There are a number of reasons for my (mostly) fear and (mostly) loathing of AI. Promoting teen suicides. Providing wrong information - oops, that mushroom actually is poisonous. Job elimination, often just because some C-suite is enamored of the promise of saving big bucks by getting rid of humans - damn the short term and long term implications. And, of course, the environmental depredation that these AI data centers are causing.
AI uses too damned much energy. It sucks up water resources, and the wastewater is often a pollutant. The noise pollution is driving folks with the misfortune to live close to one of these monster AI data centers nuts.
And to what end? So a bunch of amoral tech bros can become even more billionaire-y? So the Family Trump can keep up with their cyber-grifting?
Given the havoc AI data centers are wreaking, I really shouldn't be paying any attention to what happened when a big ol' AI data center was being built in Wyoming. Which is really not causing mega problems.
And why not Wyoming as a great location for data centers, one might well ask? It's a big state with virtually no people. So what if those data centers hum all night? And Wyoming has wind. And natural gas. And oil. So they can probably power up without raising the electric bills of the 600K or so cowpokes who live in the state. (The relative handful of tech bros and Hollywood types who live in the Jackson Hole enclave can afford to pay more, so I won't waste any of my personal, finite supply of energy worrying about them.)
But what captured my eye about this Wyoming data center is that it belongs to Meta, a company that happens to be owned by one of the tech-bro-iest of 'em all, Mark Zuckerberg.
Meta is building a mega data center in Cheyenne, which is slated to become operative in 2027:
...but its contractor has come under fire after city officials traced wastewater containing a rare bacterium to the project.
By bacteria standards, Cupriavidus gilardii (scary name aside) isn't all that awful, but:
While harmless to most healthy people, it can cause severe pneumonia, bloodstream and lung infections, and, in rare cases, death among people with weakened immune systems.
Officials stressed that it did not contaminate the city's drinking water, but said it disrupted the municipal reclaimed water system and required months of cleanup. (Source: Daily Mail)
And Meta has now permanently lost permission "to discharge wastewater from its fill-and-flush operations into Cheyenne's treatment system, where the water is recycled and later used to irrigate parks and other public spaces."
This is by no means the worst thing that one of these data centers is going to be responsible for. Some towns are experiencing low water pressure; sediment build up the gives residents brown water - just what you want to brush your teeth and wash your hair with, let alone bathe your baby; a whining, skull-piercing noise running 24/7. (Some of the sound levels aren't just annoying, they're harmful to hearing.) Oh, and the home values for those living in a data center neighborhood are declining. Which might be offset if data centers produced high paying jobs for folks living in the hood. But once construction is finished, data centers don't require a lot of employees to keep the centers humming. (And some of their jobs are going to - you guessed it - AI.)
Not that the masters of the universe clamoring for these data centers give a damn. Frankly, my dear, they don't.
But I sure would like to see Mark Zuckerberg and his pals spend a night in humming distance of one of their data centers. And take a nice big gulp of water from the local taps whille they're at it.
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Image Source: Red Bubble
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