Sucked In. The Gaping Maw That Feeds AI Mania

“While technological successes are celebrated, the social fabric is progressively eroded, as if by a silent virus.” — Pope Leo XIV

The artificial intelligence industry likes to refer to its massive “hyperscale” data centres as “campuses.” That’s complete bullshit. A data centre hosts no students, no laughter and no libraries. The poet William Blake would have had a proper name for these ugly bunkers: “dark Satanic Mills.”

Into this mighty gyre now churns $3 trillion of global capital , much of it flowing from debt markets, private credit and government programs that uncritically regard the dangerously flawed technology as nothing short of miraculous, inevitable and necessary. That’s trillions of dollars not being spent to address the cost-of-living crisis or the storms of climate change.

AI’s capital intensity, largely directed by and for a secretive cartel of billionaires , also cultivates a job desert. According to one estimate , it takes a capital investment of $54 million to create one permanent job in the data centre industry while other sectors can create one full-time job with an investment of $322,000. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of jobs AI promises to make obsolete.

The gyre sucks up not only capital but immense supplies of energy. More than 11,000 data centres now occupy the planet, and half are located in the United States. A single 100-megawatt hyperscale facility requires enough electrical juice to light up 100,000 households. A larger proposed AI factory in New Zealand will draw 280 megawatts, or six per cent of that country’s electrical demand. And that facility’s electricity consumption will be dwarfed fivefold and more by behemoths slated for construction around the world.

Already, in Ireland, the data centre industry now consumes 22 per cent of that island’s electricity. That’s more than all of that country’s urban households. The AI juggernaut seems able to manufacture silence by public servants. A recent Irish government report on the importance of data centres just happened to omit any reference to the AI surge and how it pushes up everyone’s electricity bills, the highest in Europe.

Now consider the energy appetite of Kevin O’Leary’s Wonder Valley project in Alberta. O’Leary proposes to spend $70 billion of other people’s money on the planet’s “largest” data centre. It would consume more electricity than is used by eight million households or 15 cities the size of Calgary. Its ravenous energy appetite will tie the robotic entity directly to Western Canada’s Montney formation , its fracked methane used to fire turbines powering the colossus.

If history is a guide, those turbines will foul the air by pumping out lung-clogging fine particulate matter and hazardous chemicals that lower the lifespans of rural people. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government has already waived any pretence of an environmental review.

Hungry for land and water

In addition to swallowing capital and energy, the gyre also absorbs forests, grasslands, suburbia and farms into its devastating spiral. Data centre footprints keep expanding along with demand for computing power so that now a hyperscale factory typically sprawls over 500 acres — 3 1/2 times the size of Disneyland. But what if regulators, wanting to “green” data centres, stipulate they be powered by utility-scale solar or wind power? That saves methane but affects even more land.

There seem to be no limits in sight. One Montana project proposes to plant an edifice the size of 3,000 football fields in the middle of cattle country. The project will be 31 times larger than its closest rural community, Broadview. O’Leary’s project would similarly fill some 8,000 acres of parkland south of Grande Prairie. That’s a swath of Alberta larger than Manhattan.

Into this gyre of land loss churn mountains of metal and minerals requiring extensive mining and processing. Copper and aluminum for power and cooling systems. Lithium or diesel for backup batteries. Gallium and germanium for the semiconductors. According to the World Economic Forum, every megawatt consumed by a data centre requires 60 to 75 tonnes of materials mainly for its power and cooling systems. As the data bunkers get larger and spend more energy, this material intensity grows like a city.

AI advocates will say to relax, because all this mind-boggling consumption nourishes the stock market and drives the hallowed metric of GDP. But most resources cannot be endlessly spun into stock plays. There are limits, for example, to clean, fresh water. The AI gyre depends on great volumes of water and is already stressing out drought-prone regions throughout North America. By 2028 data centres will consume enough fresh water in the United States to quench the indoor water needs of 18 million people.

AI actually begins as a water hog. The manufacturing of semiconductor chips, which demands ultra-pure water for fabrication, involves 400 chemicals including cancer-causing per- and polyfl…