'The industry focused heavily on how quickly we could build compute and not enough on what was required to support it': we spoke to an AI infrastructure expert about the AI data center backlash

Balaji tammabattula.

The disconnect between the companies looking to fast-track the development of AI data centers and the communities and politicians fighting back against them is massive.

The likes of Microsoft, Meta and Amazon Web Services (AWS) funnel money into the continued expansion of AI data centers on a national scale. But with those data centers comes a negative impact on our environment, with precious fossil fuels being used to power them and a huge strain on our power grid resulting from their computing demand.