The primary concern about AI that most people share is the fear that robots will take their jobs or turn them into Terminators. An important but lesser-known outcome of AI is its impact on the environment, such as polluting the water with chemicals that persist, like PFASs, which are leached into American lakes and harm the wildlife therein. The impact on the water leads to a decrease in fish populations, as PFASs can cause problems with their reproductive organs, cells, and organ health. According to the MPCA, PFASs accumulate in aquatic species over time, which can then be transferred to humans through our diet. It’s not just fish and oysters that are affected by the forever chemicals; humans who consume fish contaminated with forever chemicals experience higher cholesterol levels, a weakened immune system, liver and kidney diseases, cancer, and developmental issues. All these impacts caused by data centers don’t even end at the environment; people who live near data centers report having the same effects as if they were being hit with military sonic weapons, like nausea and loss of positional awareness this concludes that data centers not only harm the environment and pose risks to human health but also pose risks to the local population as well.
The economy is taking a hit from these data centers as there is no regulations on them which allows them to fuel their data needs and drain the market of RAM. There has been a 619% increase in RAM prices which is a key piece of equipment for most technological devices making it difficult to obtain them. Each time you put in a prompt to Chat GPT it uses the same amount of water as the average water bottle often polluting it with coolant chemicals.
With little regulation on noise data centers can cause noise pollution of 70 decibels and more. The Gerry McGovern website which has multiple books on the data centers with great reviews states living near a data center “is like having a lawn mower running in your living room 24/7” they also noted health effects such as “A growing body of research shows that the type of chronic noise emitted by data centers is a hidden health threat that increases the risk of hypertension, stroke and heart attacks.”
All this taken into consideration it would be wise to put regulations on data centers such as taking precautions to dampen the noise and find other forms of cooling that don’t pollute the water and other environmental and local population considerations.