There is an unnerving low hum coming from data centers, where tens of thousands of chips perform trillions of operations each second to help drive the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. These chips fuel the text, photos, and videos produced by advanced AI models’ queries.
Their computations, which are essentially the turning on and off of minuscule silicon transistors that comprise a chip, are actually silent. However, as with all computers, practically every watt of the enormous electricity need to run this operation is lost as heat, and the sound you hear is the slow buzz of thousands of fans needed to keep the heat from frying the server racks. Depending on the facility’s size, you may hear the thrum of transformers in substations that channel energy.
In the United States, opposition to data centers is particularly visible on the political left. Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders has advocated for a freeze on all new development. “People are looking around worried about how quickly the technology is moving, how little control they have over it, how will data centers impact their community in terms of electric rates and water utilisation,” he said to me.
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