Data centers

Last December, in a piece called “The Data Center Backlash Is Global,” I reported that residents around the world were rising up against Big Tech just as they have risen up against Big Wind and Big Solar, rejecting applications to use land. Sure, AI may be a world-changing technology, but the rush to build massive new data centers has resulted in dozens of rejections or restrictions on projects from Indianapolis to Dublin, Ireland. People are worried about property values, water usage, electricity costs and what it means for the neighborhood: “quality-of-life impacts,” as a member of the Indianapolis council, who led the opposition to Google’s billion-dollar project, explained.

In the 1966 novel Colossus by British author D.F. Jones, a supercomputer (which goes by the name of Colossus) is given control and decision-making power over the US’s nuclear arsenal – a logical and unemotional computer being better placed, it is assumed, to make unemotional decisions than a human. Eventually, Colossus discovers the existence of a similar supercomputer in the USSR and begins communicating with its Russian counterpart in mathematical languages about technological advances beyond human comprehension. Frightened by the possibilities this presents, scientists sever the connection – only for Colossus to threaten to launch nuclear weapons if it isn’t reconnected.