AI data centers & the fight for Michigan’s water

AI is quickly replacing human-created content and human user accounts on the internet. This has not only filled the internet with inane AI slop content; it’s also led to the rise of AI-generated scambots. Internet scams and identity theft are on the rise, with the elderly at risk the most. Meanwhile, AI companies like Palantir and OpenAI have been contracted by the US government to collect, store, and analyze the personal data of US citizens. These companies are openly spying on us, and they’re using consumer-facing AI tools such as ChatGPT to do it. 

In economics, a “bubble” is when something in the market costs way more than it’s actually worth. We’ve seen this happen in Silicon Valley, as tech companies get sold for more money than they ever end up creating. We saw it leading up to the real estate crash of 2008, as NINJA (No Income, No Job, No Assets) loans were being packaged into portfolios and sold to investors as AAA rated mortgage bonds. And we’re seeing it now, as Wall Street and the US government pour hundreds of billions of dollars into an industry which is improving revenue for only 5% of its users, and which is eating itself alive.

Residential neighbors to a Meta (Facebook) AI data center are claiming they “can’t drink the water” due to contamination, and they’re not alone; AI data centers are being fought across the country. Data Center Watch estimates over $64B in data center investment has been blocked in the US in recent years due to grassroots pushback by local communities. Some studies estimate AI data centers will consume over 1.7 trillion gallons of water per day worldwide by 2027. The Great Lakes contain over 20% of the world’s fresh water reserves–and technocrats seem to believe the best use of those reserves is to drain them to make AI slop and an automated surveillance state. 

AI data centers are federally subsidized through the CHIPS act, passed by the Biden administration and still alive and well under the Trump administration. At the state level, they’re subsidized by the recently passed Data Center Tax Break bills (HB 4906 and SB 237). Both of these subsidies deny local communities one of the only potential long-term benefits of having data centers as a neighbor: tax revenue. Meanwhile, corporate subsidies have been proven not to work over and over again.

Amazon just replaced 14,000 workers with AI, and companies like Salesforce and several airlines have also made significant cuts. This exposes the argument that these data centers are needed to create job growth to be a complete and utter lie. These AI data centers are not only water killers and energy hogs; they’re also job killers. Meanwhile, as use of AI in customer service increases, the quality of customer experience is plummeting. United Healthcare is using AI to automate the denial of its claims, which eliminates jobs while ensuring patients face even higher barriers to accessing health care.

There have been several teenage suicides in the US which have been connected to the use of AI chatbots, and even more instances of murders which have been linked to AI-fueled paranoia. The psychology community has dubbed the new phenomenon “AI psychosis,” in which frequent interactions with AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, cause users to lose touch with reality. AI chatbots tend to reinforce users’ viewpoints and use frequent flattery, and its information is scraped indiscriminately from the Internet. When users engage heavily one-on-one with AI chatbots, it can create a feedback loop of information which spirals outside of reality. Users who are struggling with mental health or disorders are the most vulnerable to AI psychosis, and mental illness is currently at an all time high. With companies like Meta attempting to introduce AI chatbots as an alternative to human interaction, the technology could have very dangerous consequences.

A recent study by MIT connected prolonged use of AI with “long-term cognitive harm,” finding that students who “repeatedly relied on ChatGPT showed weakened neural connectivity, impaired memory recall, and diminished sense of ownership over their own writing.” In other words: using AI is destroying people’s ability to think, remember, and express agency.