The Backlash to the AI-Fueled Data Center Boom

Generative AI might be all the rage in the tech industry, but it’s incredibly computationally intensive and that means it has a massive material cost. To power their AI fantasies, major cloud providers are planning a significant expansion of their data center networks. But the water, energy, and mineral demands of those massive warehouses of servers are already fueling a growing backlash around the world. Paris Marx will discuss the high cost of the generative AI hype cycle, where the backlash to data center construction is most fierce, and how that fight gives us the opportunity to question how much computation we actually need to build a better world.