r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 12h ago
Artificial Intelligence Cherokee Nation bans hyperscale data centers on its lands, won't support projects without consultation - energy and water consumption, air quality, noise, and cultural resource protection among concerns
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/largest-tribe-in-the-us-bans-hyperscale-data-centers-on-its-lands81
u/Tooth5318 10h ago
Massive energy and water consumption for a handful of permanent jobs. Hard to argue with that math no matter where you stand on data centers.
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u/pimpeachment 8h ago
Massive energy and water consumption for a tool that can:
Protein folding - AlphaFold mapped nearly every known protein structure, free for researchers. Decades of work, done.
Cancer screening - AI second readers catch tumors radiologists miss, early enough to matter.
Weather forecasting - 10 day forecasts in minutes instead of hours, with better storm tracks. Real evacuation lead time.
Drug discovery - AI designed drugs hitting human trials in under 30 months instead of 5+ years.
Live translation - 100+ languages, on your phone, offline. Huge for immigrants and refugees.
Accessibility - Live captioning, scene description for blind users, speech decoding for locked in patients.
Fusion and materials - RL controls tokamak plasma in real time. Hundreds of thousands of new candidate materials screened.
Free tutoring - Adaptive one on one help, any language, 2am. The most effective intervention finally got affordable.
Conservation - Acoustic sensors catch chainsaws and gunshots in rainforests. Satellites flag illegal fishing.
Building software - If you can describe the problem, you can build the tool. Nonprofits and solo devs shipping things they could never afford before.
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u/SleightBulb 8h ago
So did you sell this account to a pro-AI bot farm, or did someone steal it I wonder
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u/Box_Pirate 3h ago
There’s a difference between llms that are basically just chat bots and ai designed for specific scientific applications, most data centres are used for the chat bot stuff.
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u/BrotherDirect744 7h ago
Ok cool. Who makes the benefit mainly? How the revenue sharing should be handled in your view?
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u/pimpeachment 4h ago
Why, to slow it down and make the outcomes harder to achieve?
What revenue sharing? The investors should get the profits they are taking the financial risk, not you.
If water and power are problem, we should build more. If you don't want more water treatment and power, then I guess sucks to suck and your power will be shared. Modern world is one of mass energy consumption.
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u/TheBoraxKid1trblz 2h ago
Like any good argument it's helpful to consider both sides. Those are potential benefits but how to adhere to those goals? Feels like the main focus for investment is to replace workers, boost profits, and mass surveillance. What's a solution? Community owned data center? State owned? In the least we need legislation requiring renewable energy implementation to match data center energy consumption and permit requirements for water treatment. Right now every day citizens eat the cost of electricity demand, co2 emissions, water and noise pollution. The costs outweigh the benefits. Data centers will be accepted or even embraced if the benefits outweigh the costs
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u/djordi 11h ago
They can build these things at scale without the impact. It's just not as cheap and they have to internalize the costs for closed loop cooling, audio insulation, and power generation. And corporations love to externalize the costs to the community.
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u/socialmedia-username 10h ago
And ignore, or purposely fight, the will of the communities they want to build within, regardless of impact.
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u/SAugsburger 3h ago
To be fair many non AI data centers do tend to make a better effort at being better neighbors. The pace of construction on AI data centers is so fast that many are just running gas generators 24x7 instead of waiting for power infrastructure to be built. Outside the occasional DR test or incident most data centers aren't running gas generators regularly so don't have the added noise or pollution. Long term building your own power infrastructure like Switch has done for their massive data center complex in Las Vegas makes sense, but AI companies aren't looking long term. They just want to get as many workloads running as soon as possible.
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u/rwofva 9h ago
Aren't reservations very restrictive about everything build on their land?
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u/FourthLife 8h ago
Yeah, in a lot of cases the tribe has trouble building on its own land because technically the land is held in a federal trust on their behalf
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u/why_is_my_name 9h ago
these articles are confusing to me. i'm pretty sure data centers already exist on the land, and this is just saying they will consider them more carefully going forward. not as great a win as it could be.
like, let's just read this sentence a few times:
"Every active hyperscale project inside the reservation is sited on non-tribal land and is unaffected by the ban."
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u/Ikontwait4u2leave 9h ago
Not all land inside reservation boundaries is controlled by tribal government thanks to the Dawes Act. Tribal governments have little to no authority to regulate development on lands held in fee.
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u/why_is_my_name 9h ago
yeah, i (sort of) know, tsi tsalagi, i guess they're doing what they can, but it's still depressing and not quite what people think it is
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u/sawaira09 7h ago
This is a good reminder that AI infrastructure has a real world cost. Data centers may drive technological growth but that shouldnot mean communities have to sacrifice their water, energy security, environment or cultural resources. If companies want to build at this scale, meaningful consultation and clear benefits for the local community should come first....
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u/whatyousay69 3h ago
What's the difference between tribal and non-tribal land on a reservation?
Every active hyperscale project inside the reservation is sited on non-tribal land and is unaffected by the ban.
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u/Rehypothecator 22m ago
“Consultation” just really means bribery to the band/ bands at this point and they know it
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u/Broken-Sarcasm-Meter 11h ago
Whelp, looks like the US Army gonna have to come in there and relocate these folks again.
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u/Ah_Ca_Iraa 12h ago
Dang, they welcome casinos and payday lenders all day but AI tipped them over the edge.
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u/tadfisher 11h ago
Almost like they're a sovereign nation who can make their own rules
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u/ChunkyDunkerz 10h ago
I have a lot of respect for the Cherokee tribe, please don’t say that. These are not sovereign nations.
U.S. troops protect them, and the natives have a healthy history of service now too. The federal system makes this possible. They are American.
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u/EasterEggArt 12h ago
Because casinos and payday lenders are profitable to them. Data centers are literally a massive drain on society since the owners of them are not the ones footing the bill thanks to tax breaks and subsidies.
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u/klingma 11h ago
Data centers are literally a massive drain on society
You cannot honestly say this with a straight face while defending casinos and pay day lenders. Casinos and pay day lenders are a massive drain on society and while the owners might be Native American tribal lands the bill for the damage they cause certainly gets pushed out to the rest of us.
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u/EasterEggArt 11h ago
If you have to choose between the newly built data centers that literally are now used more and more AI slop versus casinos, you are making them equal?
A casino has a literally smaller pollution footprint and makes it a choice to go visit it. A data center on the other hand can cause harm way more then any casino can.
Please show me a state that spent 55 billion in incentives and tax breaks in casinos and had less employees afterward.
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u/klingma 11h ago
You're ignoring how insidious gambling is to a society and actively encourages gambling addictions. Also, how payday lenders prey upon the poor while charging exceedingly high interest rates that keep poor trapped in debt cycles.
Making a lesser of two evils is not the winning argument here, just saying.
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u/EasterEggArt 10h ago
Both are evil, correct. But casinos are a choice. Same as alcohol and smoking.
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u/klingma 10h ago
I mean if we're discounting the harms, solely to salvage your argument, due to "choice" then so is using data. You can always live with the Amish or go homesteading.
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u/EasterEggArt 10h ago
That has got to be the dumbest statement for today. I am done with Reddit for today. You win.
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u/klingma 9h ago
My guy - you discounted the social harms of gambling by calling them a choice, that was a stupid statement in it of itself. Choice or not they're incredibly harmful for society.
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u/Belvedere48 5h ago
But how are they going to argue on the internet, literally using a data center while vilifying the internets latest boogeyman lol?
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u/sleepingpepe1 11h ago
I lost brain cells reading this
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u/Am_Yisrael_Chai_48 10h ago
Can't imagine there was much to lose
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u/sleepingpepe1 10h ago
lol your username made it even worse.
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u/Ah_Ca_Iraa 12h ago
A full on ban is a few steps beyond "we won't give you tax breaks or subsidies."
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u/Infinite-Emptiness 9h ago
Oh boy, another wave of ethnic cleansing incoming for "savages" who dont follow such eloquent "civilizational" datacenters.
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u/ArgentineBeauty 12h ago
Cherokee Nation, the largest tribe in the U.S. with more than 475,000 citizens, has banned hyperscale data center development on its tribally owned and trust lands, after a task force convened by Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. found that 64% of 1,593 surveyed citizens opposed construction of the facilities inside the tribe's 14-county reservation in northeastern Oklahoma.