The AI Revolution: ‘Not in My Backyard’

I’ve spent decades trying to explain the sector I work in only to be met with glazed stares, and the eventual ‘so you do data management?’  response. Now, I’ve gone from trying to explain what my industry IS, to trying to justify its existence and counter arguments from relatives, friends and even my own kids as to the ‘evil’ nature of  my once blissfully unknown area of employment.  This got me thinking about how the world would look today, if, during the Industrial Revolution, communities had been allowed to stop factories from being built?

Granted, it’s not a perfect comparison. AI isn’t steam power, and a modern data centre is a long way from a Victorian cotton mill. But the parallels are becoming harder to ignore. Make no mistake about it, we ARE at the beginning of another industrial revolution and just as with the first one, the infrastructure needed to make it happen is arriving before society has worked out exactly how it feels about it.

That is producing a backlash, a very public and very emotive backlash. A bit of a shock for a sector that has spent several decades operating very much under the radar as far as the wider public was concerned. As a sector, we have to firstly realise that this backlash isn’t going to just go away, and secondly that countering with golf course water usaeage vs AI data centre water useage, or telling everyone they should stop watching Netflix if they’re so concerned isn’t going to cut it. 

Look at what is happening in the UK.

In Scotland, communities are increasingly organising protests against hyperscale developments. The Financial Times recently reported on opposition to projects around Fife, Larbert and Edinburgh, with residents concerned about the impact on electricity and water supplies, rural landscapes and the relatively small number of permanent jobs being created. 

In Potters Bar, residents have protested against plans for a large data centre on farmland. The site was brought forward under the government's new "grey belt" planning rules, and opponents argue that green space is being sacrificed to meet the demands of the global AI industry.

In Buckinghamshire, local opposition to the Woodlands Park data centre went all the way to the courts after the government overruled the council's rejection of the scheme. When earlier this year, the government admitted that it had made a "serious error" in allowing the project to proceed without binding environmental commitments from the developer, this served to fuel further unrest and backlash.

The criticism isn’t just at a local level. Its increasingly becoming part of the mainstream political and media debate. National news outlets eems only too willing to fuel the fire by releasing  ‘opinion’ pieces ranging from The Guardian’s recent article as to whether the UK is going to face a choice between homes and servers, to their ‘investigation’ into the impact of data centres on the residents of Slough, an area long home to multiple facilities.

Why Now?

Its pretty simple really. People can see the buildings, they can hear them. They can see the power infrastructure being built around them and they can, most importantly read about them in their daily news catch up. What this means, is that local and regional communities are beginning to ask whether the benefits justify the disruption.

And then look at America

The US is further ahead in this particular argument. In May, a Gallup poll found that seven in ten Americans opposed building an AI data centre in their local area. Only around a quarter supported the idea. Then  in July, opposition went national.

Protesters organised 142 demonstrations across 42 states against AI data centre expansion. The concerns were remarkably consistent: water consumption, electricity demand, environmental impact, local control and whether communities were receiving enough economic benefit in return.

Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire. And in this case, the ‘Fire’ is that the backlash has become serious enough to enter state politics.

New York has imposed a one-year moratorium on large new data centres. Arizona has halted a data centre tax exemption. Illinois has paused tax incentives while it considers tougher standards. Pennsylvania is looking at requirements for data centres to cover their full power costs. A huge shift away from the heady days when these same states were falling over themselves to offer the best incentives, usually tax related, to encourage rapid build out of data centres. 

Even Texas Governor Greg Abbott, previously one of the industry's strongest political supporters, has now said data centre companies "dug their own grave" by failing to win community support. I’m going to ignore the fact that  our sectors; biggest ‘advocate’ is currently Donald Trump, who has argued that communities opposing data centres are making a mistake – final nail in coffin for any support??

Regardless of geography, AI infrastructure has become a social and political debate.

Anyone remember the Luddites ? Much maligned by history, the Luddites have been accused of hating technology, much like their counterparts today. But the story is more nuanced. They were in actual fact, skilled workers whose livelihoods were being threatened by mechanisation. The main Luddite argument was actually about who benefited from technological change and who paid the price – does that sound familiar?

When it comes down to it, most people aren't asking for AI to disappear. What they are actually asking is: Who pays for the electricity? Who pays for the new grid infrastructure? What happens to water resources? What happens to land? How many jobs are actually created? What does the local community get in return? And why should a town accept the disruption if most of the economic benefit ends up somewhere else?

These are all  legitimate questions, and the biggest mistake the sector is making is to not answer these questions, instead we’ve fallen into the trap of treating every objection as opposition to progress.

This really IS a revolution

There is another reason I think the Industrial Revolution comparison matters. From corporate websites to PR pieces, to mainstream media articles, AI is simply described as another stage of digital transformation.I don't think it is.

Think back to the late 1990’s. The internet changed how we communicate. Then in the 2000’s, cloud changed where computing happens. Slightly later smartphones changed how we access information. THIS was evolution.  But AI potentially has the ability to change how work itself gets done. It can write, code, analyse, design, translate, discover patterns and increasingly make decisions. It isn't just making existing processes faster. It is changing the economics of what can be produced, who can produce it and how much human effort is required. THATis a revolution.

And revolutions require infrastructure.

AI might look like software from the outside, but underneath it is extraordinarily physical. Chips,Power, land, data centre facilities, cooling, fibre. I could go on. The data centre IS now the factory floor of the AI revolution.

Which brings us back to the original question, what if we had stopped the factories of the industrial revolution? 

Imagine Britain in the early 1800s, a company wants to build a factory. It will consume coal. It will create pollution. It will change the landscape. It will bring hundreds of workers into an area. It may make noise and place pressure on local infrastructure so residents object.

Now imagine that happening everywhere. No factories near towns, no railways because they are noisy and disruptive,  no large-scale manufacturing because of pollution and land us. And no one could argue that these objections were irrational, almost all would have been completely justified.

But imagine if the response had been ‘Fine. We won't build them’?

We wouldn't simply have ended up with fewer factories, we would have ended up with a fundamentally different economy. Industrialisation eventually transformed manufacturing, transport, agriculture, medicine and communications. It created industries and occupations that would have been unimaginable to people living in the early 19th century. The payback wasn't a slightly more efficient factory, it was an entirely different world.

That doesn't mean data centres get a free pass!

This is where the analogy with the Industrial Revolution should make the data centre sector, a sector I have personally worked in and loved for almost 3 decades, uncomfortable.

Because, Industrialisation created extraordinary wealth but It also created terrible working conditions, pollution and social inequality and society eventually had to develop new rules around it. AI infrastructure needs its own version of that social contract.

Communities shouldn't simply be told to accept the downsides because AI is inevitable, or that the local golf course uses more water so what’s the problem? Developers need to demonstrate what they are bringing to the table.That means meaningful community engagement, sensible locations, investment in local infrastructure, transparency around energy and water consumption, and a much clearer explanation of the economic value being created.

It means finding ways to make the infrastructure itself part of the benefit. So we now have a different set of questions to answer.

Is waste heat being re-used?. Is the local energy infrastructure being improved / strengthened? Are local skills being developed? Will local ommunities share in the economic upsides?

And perhaps most importantly, developers and operators need to stop treating public engagement as something that happens after the site has effectively been chosen.

The answer to a community saying "we don't want this" shouldn't be:"You don't understand AI."It should be "Let's talk about why this is happening, what it means for you, and what we can do to make sure you benefit from it."

The community  payback isn't the data centre

Perhaps, and this is just my opinion, the biggest point being missed in the current debate is that the ‘local’ payback ISN’T the data centre.  When billions are being spent on buildings, substations, fibre and power generation we need to articulate that these aren’t the end product, what they are is the enabling infrastructure and the real community return could be much bigger.

AI could accelerate scientific research, improve healthcare, transform manufacturing, increase productivity, help solve complex energy problems and create industries that don't exist today. Lets face it, some of the most valuable applications haven’t even been invented yet.That is the nature of a revolution.

If we already knew exactly what AI was going to produce, it wouldn't really be a revolution. It would simply be the next stage of technological development.

We shouldn't stop the revolution. We should build it better.

The answer isn't to build data centres regardless of the consequences. Nor is it to stop them. The answer is for the whole exosystem to recognise that we are building the physical infrastructure for something that could fundamentally change the economy. In short, we need to get the social contract in place right from the beginning.

Listen to communities, address the genuine concerns, don't hide behind the inevitability of AI,make sure the benefits are visible locally.

And perhaps keep one thought in mind when the next data centre proposal lands on a planning committee's desk. The building isn't the revolution, but what happens inside it that might change the world.

If we had banned the factories, we might have avoided some of the problems of the Industrial Revolution. We would also have missed almost everything it eventually made possible.

The challenge for us as a sector  is to make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of the first revolution while still having the courage to build the infrastructure for the second.