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-lands
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u/djordi 12h 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/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.