With each development, technology promises us faster, easier, better ways of doing things. But, it comes at a cost—some are greater than the others. The proliferation of generative AI has sprouted more data centers, along with new social and environmental risks for various communities at its wake. 

Costs and Benefits

Although artificial intelligence has been used in various forms before, the 2020s saw immense growth in generative AI technologies, with tools like ChatGPT widely used for generating texts and images. Today, we see the feature everywhere, even when crafting a simple email or sending chat messages. 

Many generative AI systems use large-scale data centers as key enabling infrastructure to store and manage data. Despite being in the ‘cloud’, these centers are very much physical and are sprouting outside of the United States to meet the skyrocketing demand. A map compiled by the Environmental Reporting Collective (ERC) has identified 705 centers across Asia, Latin America, and Europe so far. 

However, costs loom behind the promises of efficiency and productivity. Data center constructions require significant amounts of skilled labor, which has been highlighted as potential employment opportunities. McKinsey even states that the data center industry faces potential labor shortages, especially during the building phase.

Sidelining Local Communities

Despite the demand, the promise of job generations declared by tech companies falls short for local communities in India and Brazil. Members of communities are concerned about how the jobs might go to outsiders with more skills that they currently lack, as the construction can be complex and high-paced amid the AI boom. Without the support of inclusive capacity development, this gap will keep widening.

Stories reported by journalists under the ERC’s collaborative project Dirty Data also reveal that local communities in Brazil, India, and Bangkok are often left in the dark regarding the data center development in their neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the construction requires huge amounts of power, water, and land from communities and places that are already struggling.

For instance, the infrastructure is reshaping how land is used. Data center sites can cover around 90.000 square meters of land, equivalent to roughly 450 football fields. In the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, which suffered from heavy flooding in 2024, data center constructions took up the land unaffected by floodwaters that otherwise could have been used for relocation.

Boundaries on Data Centers

Criticism and concerns have long been surfacing regarding the cost of data centers, including on public health and energy consumption. The social and environmental implications might be too severe for the infrastructure that yield minimum benefits for the communities, who are often most impacted.

Therefore, it is crucial to see this development with critical eyes without getting blindsided by its potential benefits, most of which are experienced only by a handful of entities. With the pace we are going now, governments must act accordingly to set boundaries on data centers through regulations and policies. These boundaries can also serve as a tool to demand transparency, accountability, due diligence, and more environmentally conscious development from companies investing in data centers regarding their impacts on local communities.

Editor: Nazalea Kusuma

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