Whether it is the front page of the local newspaper or the cover of a national magazine (or just routine conversation), it is difficult to escape the fact that there has been relentless pressure to build more and more data centers, in large part to support the boom in development of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”). The pressure to build, of course, comes primarily from the firms committed to developing AI. The pushback comes from various quarters: people and institutions concerned with environmental impacts of the data centers together with people and institutions (including state and local governments) who fear the long-term consequences of the “AI Revolution.”
In speaking recently on the topic of AI data center development, I have been asked several times to put the tensions in historical perspective. In my more than half a century of private law practice, I have seen these same tensions occur in circumstances where major innovations are being proposed. It is worth recounting some of those circumstances as lessons in how the “for v. against” dynamic played out. The results were far from uniform, which calls for caution in predicting how the data center / AI debate will evolve. While some will react to the historical examples as “out of left field” and “fundamentally different” given the substance and sheer magnitude of the AI issue, it is nonetheless useful to look back on history and assess whether the lessons are instructive.
Continue reading “The Pressure to Build Data Centers—and the Growing Pushback: A Historical Perspective”