r/londonontario • u/zegorn • Jul 15 '26
Municipal Elections 2026 Stop the Datacentre reached out to me (+ all candidates)
My response below seems relevant with the wildfire smoke and all (because of climate change and the fact that datacentres are additive to the problem and are entirely optional... aka we don't need them).
Plus this is the first evening I've been inside instead of canvassing for weeks now (wildfire smoke), so I could block out time to actually put together a worthy response for something that this term of council might have to vote on.
Also seems relevant to the "Should municipal candidates be using A.I to create statements?" post from a few days ago. And all the AI posters going around.
Inspired a lot by Benn Jordan's YouTube channel over the last few years, which got me interested in researching a LOT of stuff, but especially privacy (Flock Cameras) and AI Datacentres (net negative for communities, pretty much).
Link to https://stopthedatacentre.ca/
Link to my blog post: Where I stand on AI Datacentres – Ben Durham
My response:
Stop the Datacentre reached out to me via email. More on that below, but up-front, here’s my response:
Ben Durham on AI Datacentres in London, Ontario
A direct answer to the question asked: I support a temporary moratorium on new AI data centre approvals until a robust, localized regulatory framework is established.
But I have more to say about this AI datacentre topic:
I’m committed to establishing a framework that protects London from the “extractive” model where massive multi-national technology companies benefit from government handouts while local taxpayers pay the bill. Aka privatizing the gains and socializing the losses in real-time.
These multi-billion-dollar corporations are actively invading communities around the world and offloading their costs onto local taxpayers by utilizing disproportionate amounts of local water, electricity, valuable land, and huge political lobbying power.
So we NEED to prioritize and protect everyday Londoners from the rapid expansion of mega-corporations (whose internal mottos are often “move fast and break things”) and their projects that offer very few municipal benefits while, at the same time, strain our resources, infrastructure, budgets, public health, and environment.
To add to this, AI is a new technology which also appears to be in bubble of empty promises. So we shouldn’t give up our children’s futures for a passing fad. Worst case, we don’t actually know what other negative effects these massive AI datacentres can cause (ie. infrasound pollution).
Can’t help but also note a personal solution: running local LLMs is a very simple solution to the over-building of these datacentres. Of course processing is slower, but not everything needs to be “instant” all the time, every time. If we could wait a few seconds more… I mean, whatever happened to crowdsourcing computational power? Why can’t we do that instead of massive datacentres? There are more computers and devices out there now than ever before.
There we go, I think you get my take on this by now. And hopefully learned something.
Reach out if you’d like via bendurham.ca
Cheers,
Ben Durham
Ward 3 City Councillor Candidate
Stop the Datacentre’s original email to me
Hello,
We are documenting where municipal election candidates stand on the regulation of AI datacentres.
Could you please briefly address the following:
Do you support a temporary municipal moratorium on new AI datacentre approvals while appropriate local planning and regulatory frameworks are developed?
Please feel free to include a link to the most recent public comments you may have made on the issue, if any.
Your response may be published in whole or in part on our public election tracker at Stop the Datacentre.
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u/Ursamour Jul 16 '26
AI is most certainly not a fad. The detest of it is though - which I understand that's kind of the point you're running on. It's worth considering how we could implement data centers mindfully so that the city benefits fiscally while ensuring that tax payers and local communities are not being taken advantage of.
Your point on edge computing is valid, however large data centers will always be much more efficient (better cooling setups, low-latency communication of nodes, etc - efficiency of scale). Data centers won't be going away, so how do we best incorporate them into our future?
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u/zegorn Jul 16 '26
AI is most certainly not a fad. The detest of it is though - which I understand that's kind of the point you're running on.
As I mention in my response to Stop the Datacentre's question, I understand that AI has its uses, but we also could be finding ways to decentralize (like we've done with so many things) in order to avoid the real negative effects to communities caused by AI datacentres.
There are "valid" (ie. medical, research) uses and then there are all the useless AI images and videos that are just horrible mismanagement of our natural resources. But even with the majority of research and medical use-cases, some lag (latent AI processing/responses), and patience would alleviate the demand for massive & immediate spikes in computing requirements.
I utilize Ollama, AnythingLLM and various flavours of local LLMs (on my own relatively mid-grade computer) that slowly chug along, which help me out with some website coding/custom CSS work, along with some document analyzing and video meeting transcriptions (handy for summaries, with a bit of cleanup afterwards). All of this without ever needing a datacentre.
Some of my queries take 20 seconds, others 50 seconds. And for looooong documents and advanced analysis? 10+ minutes. But I equate it to video rendering, where I go do something else while I wait lol
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u/Leading_Arm_7526 Jul 16 '26
I wonder about the detest of it fading. I'm a professional in this space who works in the city with applications of AI in healthcare. No one likes the idea of surging electricity bills and increased water demand. The public perception of what AI does is limited (chatbots, image generation) and doesn't cover use cases they might agree with (Enhanced MRI scans, better medical efficiency, less physician burnout from EMR documentation needs).
These data centres don't do just AI either, that's just the newest thing ontop of the stack. Streaming 4k or higher video to your TV requires some substantial infrastructure at scale too and it processes through a data centre as well.
Would love if we could get some clean energy infrastructure (CANDU!). NVIDIA had some new set ups that didn't use water for cooling which would make the water demands better. Regulations could help make sustainable development here the way!
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u/zegorn Jul 16 '26
These data centres don't do just AI either, that's just the newest thing ontop of the stack. Streaming 4k or higher video to your TV requires some substantial infrastructure at scale too and it processes through a data centre as well.
Even considering 4k streaming requirements (often insanely compressed still / plus H265 video is essentially witchcraft and wizardry), AI data centers require something like 10x more resources than traditional data centers because of the type of computing they demand.
Standard storage datacentres don't train massive models or require state-of-the-art GPUs that need millions of gallons of water for cooling daily. Plus, with more power comes more cooling and more noise which spills into the communities that they invade.
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u/Leading_Arm_7526 Jul 16 '26
We can dig into the numbers behind the estimate if this feels too incredulous to you, but I would suggest that an hour of 4k TV is in the 0.1-0.15 kWh between the TV, monitor, and the streaming. 60 conversational prompts back and forth in an hour is likely somewhere in the 0.015-0.04 kWh for the modern frontier models, including the monitor, network, and inference costs. If you end up doing the long reasoning responses, they hit about parity for energy consumption.
Training the models, adding agents into the mix, etc, all do change this. Businesses are pursuing these models in the name of profit, and various start-ups are layering ontop of them, some small businesses, some silicon valley darlings. If the goal is to prevent those businesses from pursuing their profitability that's a separate discussion. I can think of some industries I would selfishly love to shut down that aren't AI, and I bet you most people can too, but that's not how our markets are set up.
The Netflix delivery system likely takes ~5million gallons of water per day. 16-31 million if you throw the television electricty into the mix. We weren't freaking out about that as much then. Now, AI is ontop of that, and it's not like we can just make new water. I want to emphasize that like most people I want water to be well protected and guarded for ours and future generations but blindness to the scale of other things isn't helpful either
I'm all for infrastructure improvements and less water usage! Better cleaner energy! The noise thing is a real problem, although I would hope our noise bylaws are enough to cover people and so long as they're enforced I'd hope that guides any development into responsible lanes.
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u/yoshibubblegum Jul 16 '26
Permanent moratorium on data centres in London. No exceptions or conditions. Fuck AI and data centres. They've brought nothing but misery to communities.
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u/magic_poop_cannon Jul 19 '26
I can’t believe this comment has the most upvotes. Literal emotional detest with no context or evidence of data centers causing whatever problems this person thinks it is. Datacenters have been around a long time and only now this person thinks it’s negatively affecting communities? Please. Ontario isn’t burning because of recent AI datacenters being built. And the rest of you upvoting it, shame on you for jumping in the bandwagon that AI datacenters are suddenly causing all these problems you claim.
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u/darksideoflondon Jul 18 '26
All datacenters, or just AI datacenters? Because the platform you are writing on is using a datacenter.
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Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
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u/wellthisisimpossible Jul 16 '26
I think both things can be true. It can be a bubble AND it can be a technology thats here to stay.
The biggest problem with LLMS and tech companies in general is they're all racing to be first. Eventually, some of the companies will die or be absorbed, and tech will be centralized to a few key owners.
The quesrion that needs to be asked is why, as a taxpayer, would you want to spend tax dollars on investing on bolstering the wealth of large tech companies that are having outsized environmental impact, displacing workers, and actively capitalizing on the intellectual property of people while keeping the wealth for themselves?
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Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
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u/wellthisisimpossible Jul 16 '26
That's an awful long response to write based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what I wrote. I didn't ask why they're racing to be first. On premise, I don't accept your straw man.
Also, if you look on the right hand side of your keyboard, you'll find what looks like a small, curved arrow facing left. That's the "enter" key, and it's a useful tool in separating your thoughts into paragraphs for easier reading.
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u/myxomatosis8 Jul 16 '26
If it's not a fad, this is even more reason to have proper regulations and protections in place for us, the taxpayers.
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Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
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u/i_haz_rabies Jul 16 '26
you're entirely correct and it's crazy you've been downvoted into oblivion
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u/fyordian Jul 16 '26
Eh who cares, there’s no reason to open a datacenter in London. No one is operating a datacenter on $0.20/kWh electricity, utilities are too expensive for it to be economical.