What's behind the growing backlash towards AI data centres? (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 1 day ago by brianpeiris@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[-] WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com 61 points 1 day ago

What's behind the growing backlash towards enormous structures that disrupt the power grid, raise utility rates, use staggering amounts of water, generate noise and air pollution, increase the ambient temperature and overall diminish the quality of life of every person who lives anywhere near one?

Gee... I wonder...

[-] Z745812939054@lemmy.zip 34 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

skimming the article, it looks to me like the target audience is people completely out of the loop and don't see the problem with AI

i know people like this. they don't have a clue how terrible AI is for everything

[-] nik282000@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

i know people like this. they don’t have a clue how terrible AI is for everything

They're called management.

[-] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago

Yeah, their title is dumb, but they do actually touch on some of that in the article.

[+] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca -24 points 1 day ago

The real reason there's a growing backlash towards AI datacenters is that people are afraid of losing their jobs to AI.

All those things you said are just excuses people are putting forward because "I just don't want to lose my job" is super backwards argument that makes them look like luddites. Most of those excuses can be entirely debunked or are flimsy at the very best.

The whole water argument is effectively a non-issue at this point, the vast majority of the new data centers are being built without evaporative coolers. Not to mention the fact that global Beef production uses around 200 times more fresh water than Global Data Centers (and that includes all the non-AI datacenters just running the basic internet and companies stuff that exists).

Power Grid and power pricing concerns can be easily addressed through legislation/regulation, which is exactly what's happening in reasonable jurisdictions like British Columbia in Canada.

The noise thing is... nothing. It's the same bullshit that got pushed for Wind Turbines. Sub-sonic, infrasonic, transonic... Bullshit. There's no scientific evidence backing up any of that shit, which is why people are pointing to random studies in non-name journals published by quack citizen-scientists who are promoting their Youtube channels.

They're also not building the damn things right next to millions of residential homes. They're in industrial parks, downtown cores, or out in rural areas. Here's a worst case scenario, Microsoft just built a new one in Vaughan, Ont (6100 Langstaff Rd) across the street from a suburb. It's a small two story datacenter next to a massive Costco distribution center that has thousands of trucks going in and out. It's still about 200 meters from the closest home, but across the intersection of two 4 lane highways which make enough noise (and air pollution) that any sort of data center is going to be entirely irrelevant.

Your average person simply sees no significant individual future benefit to having these built that would outweigh such a risk to their existence and value.

[-] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 day ago

people are afraid of losing their jobs to AI.

Nah, it's more like they're pissed their bosses will attempt to replace their jobs with AI that can't actually do their job, and instead shift that work onto the remaining employees. It's AI-washing to hide cost-cutting.

global Beef production uses around 200 times more fresh water than Global Data Centers

Whataboutism. We're not the ones using shitty fallacies as arguments. Fuck beef consumption too.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/i-sat-down-with-two-cooling-experts-to-find-out-what-ais-biggest-problem-is-in-the-data-center

Water cooling can be done in a smaller space with less power, but it requires enormous amount of water. A recent study determined that a single hyper-scaled facility would need 1.5 million liters of water per day to provide cooling and humidification.
AI is typically deployed in 20-30 cabinet clusters at or above 40 KW per cabinet. This represents a fourfold increase in KW/cabinet with the deployment of AI. The difference is staggering.

reasonable jurisdictions like British Columbia in Canada
They’re also not building the damn things right next to millions of residential homes

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/protest-against-ai-data-centres-in-vancouver-9.7210309

Hundreds of people marched through Vancouver on Saturday to protest two planned AI data centres in the city, raising concerns about the amount of water and energy such facilities can use as the region faces tighter water restrictions.
The project has the backing of the B.C. government
The City of Vancouver is also throwing its support behind the proposal
The protest comes as Metro Vancouver remains under Stage 2 water restrictions, which bans lawn watering, and prepares for the likely move to Stage 3 restrictions sometime in June.
“I think this is an incredibly inefficient use of land, both in the heart of downtown Vancouver and Mount Pleasant”

The noise thing is… nothing.

https://mississippitoday.org/2025/11/24/southaven-residents-fear-pollution-complain-of-noise-from-elon-musks-xai-data-center-turbines/

Jason Haley, who’s lived in his Southaven home for the last two decades, in August started to hear a whirring, mechanical noise from outside that sounded like a leaf blower.
The noise would go on for days at a time and through the night, he told Mississippi Today. He soon realized the sounds were coming from a cluster of natural gas turbines about a half mile away.
Over the summer, billionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company set up shop in north Mississippi, erecting dozens of turbines on the site of a former power plant to fuel two data centers just up the road in Memphis.

I'm going to have to start using a browser extension to label trolls like the reddit days.

[-] HonoredMule@lemmy.ca 3 points 16 hours ago

I wouldn't have considered the noise pollution to exceed the scope of a nuisance and disruption to wildlife habitat, but Benn Jordan did a pretty good job demonstrating infrasound's capacity to impact human health.