Everyone is afraid of AI. Data centers have become – Latest News
Data centers have become the stylish new enemy amongst activists.
Critics declare the centers are utilizing inordinate quantities of electrical energy and water to energy artificial intelligence, inspiring protesters to take to the streets and Democratic lawmakers to go to Albany to stymie their development.
However, some specialists say the anti-data heart push is more of a ethical panic than an empirical one, typically based mostly on speculative and typically bunk projections.
Protesters are opposing AI knowledge centers, with many citing environmental considerations. LightRocket through Getty Images
It appears that knowledge centers are the boogeyman onto which bigger fears concerning the influence of AI are being projected.
“The estimates of future data-center development may be overestimated by a factor of three to five,” Jonathan Koomey, an power researcher who has been learning data-center electrical energy utilization for many years, advised The Post. “It is not as simple as saying, ‘We don’t want data centers to use water.’ You have to think about the trade-offs.”
Concerns about knowledge centers have largely centered round the concept they’re large guzzlers of power and water, which (alongside aircon) is used to cool banks of servers and electical gear.
Worries about water consumption have been popularized through an oft-repeated statistic concerning the water consumption of a Chilean knowledge heart from journalist Karen Hao’s e-book, “Empire of AI.” The solely drawback: Hao had by accident exaggerated the water utilization by a issue of 1,000.
Karen Hao admitted to vastly overestimating water consumption at a Chilean knowledge heart. dpa/image alliance through Getty Images
According to the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, simply 0.2% of New York state’s water and three.5% of the state’s electrical energy had been utilized by knowledge centers in 2025.
David Mytton, a researcher of sustainable computing at Oxford University, says “people tend to focus on very large numbers” that “sound very large by themselves” however are completely devoid of context.
For instance, the final dependable knowledge for knowledge heart water utilization is a research by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which estimated the 2023 knowledge heart consumption of water in USA to be 17.4 billion gallons.
It could sound like a lot, however is dwarfed by different water makes use of. Swimming Pools use 200 billion gallons and Golf Courses 476 billion gallons, on average, per 12 months. 1,000,000 gallons of water circulate into New York City every day for its 9 million residents.
“Data centers account for less than 1% of US water consumption. The largest user is agriculture, which accounts for around 80% of water consumption in the US,” Mytton mentioned.
“When you’re talking about millions of gallons of water per day going into some data centers, the equivalent in agriculture is tens of billions of gallons per day.”
Data heart power utilization might be overestimated by as a lot as 5 instances, in response to some specialists. REUTERS
Jonathan Koomey beleives that international actors are fomenting anti-data heart sentiment. Courtesy of Jonathan Koomey
And whereas more knowledge centers are being constructed, they’re additionally changing into more environment friendly. Amazon mentioned it used 2.5 billion gallons of water in its knowledge centers in 2025, and is 75% of the way in which there to being “water positive” by 2030.
Koomey’s evaluation of knowledge heart electrical energy consumption additionally discovered that projections about future power utilization are based mostly on very unsure predictions of future industry growth and likewise typically double depend sure services, resulting in overestimation within the public creativeness.
Start your day with all you need to know
Morning Report delivers the most recent information, videos, pictures and more.
Thanks for signing up!
“If I had to choose one thing that is leading people to think this is a bigger deal than it is, the double-counting issue is a big one,” he mentioned.
Powering knowledge centers within the US in 2026 will use 270 terawatt-hours (TWh) in response to the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. That’s barely much less than is used for residential and commerical lighting over the 12 months, and about 60% of the 437 Twh of electrical energy used to energy air conditioners throughout the nation. The US is estimated to have consumed 4,200 TWh of electrical energy in whole in 2025.
A Microsoft knowledge heart in Aldie, Virginia, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. Bloomberg through Getty Images
Still, the concept Data Centers are uniquely environmentally evil has endurance amongst protesters, who rally behind mottos like “data centers are energy vampires” and “hot sl—ts hate data centers.”
It’s a panic that New York Dems have latched onto. This month they handed a one 12 months pause on the approval of building giant knowledge centers, the primary moratorium of its form within the nation.
“All these politicians want to be populists and they all want a scapegoat to blame; data centers are just the latest example,” Ross Marchand, government director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, advised The Post. “Whenever politicians see that people are afraid, they see an opportunity to sow division, turn people against each other and mobilize the public.”
Data centers are more problematic in areas with out dependable water sources. LightRocket through Getty Images
Data centers actually aren’t totally innocent and shouldn’t be constructed with reckless disregard. As Mytton factors out, they’ll change the feel of rural communities and be particularly detrimental in areas that already battle with water entry.
“None of these are insurmountable problems,” he mentioned. “They require engagement and explanation with the local community. This all comes down to community engagement and understanding the concerns of the local population.”
But the anti-data heart activism has expanded from these instantly impacted of their communities into an online anti-capitalist motion that makes use of the centers as a straw man for attacking tech innovation.
Protesters have embraced foolish slogans of their opposition to knowledge centers. @byboyfantasy/X
It’s a trend that Koomey suspects international adversaries are encouraging in an effort to stymy American progress in AI.
“I’m 100% sure that there are people ginning it up and fomenting discontent,” he mentioned. “Some of it is bottom-up, from people who are actually concerned about their communities… [but] there are state actors whose goal is simply to cause there to be dissension inside the United States.”
Unfortunately, many people are weak to falling for these kinds of anti-progress narratives — just because they’re scared.
The anti-data heart craze is much less a outcome of actual numbers and more a symptom of one thing far more vital: our nervousness about what AI will do to our financial system and our lives. Claims about water and electrical energy are a tangible stand-in for our basic uncertainty about the place we’re heading.
Young people have a lot of causes to be involved about AI. But they need to concentrate on the actual ones, as a substitute of peddling misinformation.
