内容来源：https://www.wired.com/story/what-the-us-anti-data-center-movement-can-learn-from-everywhere-else/

内容总结：

科技批评人士帕里斯·马克斯的新书《超大规模：大型科技公司数据帝国的野心与过度》恰逢数据中心的反对声浪达到高潮之际出版。马克斯多年关注数据中心问题，他在书中梳理了从越战时期反战抗议针对美国计算机，到爱尔兰、智利近期抵制运动，再到新西兰数据中心替代方案的全球抗争史。他指出，爱尔兰2021年因电网容量不足对都柏林数据中心实施禁令后，行业转而寻求建设专用天然气发电厂为数据中心供电，并游说允许私营企业自建电缆，这一模式正在美国重现且规模更大、速度更快。马克斯认为当前正处于AI泡沫之中，若泡沫破裂，已规划的天然气发电厂仍将存在并寻找新客户。他呼吁政府对数据中心开发和AI产品实施更严格的监管，并质疑生成式AI所承诺的效益是否足以证明其消耗的资源是合理的。与此同时，欧盟对AI的需求正与欧洲国家的气候目标产生冲突，数据中心或将在明年欧洲各国选举中成为政治焦点。

中文翻译：

帕里斯·马克斯的新书来得正是时候。这位长期批评大型科技公司的评论人、《科技救不了我们》播客的主持人，多年来一直在思考数据中心的问题，而《超大规模：大型科技公司数据帝国的野心与过度》恰逢反对声浪达到沸点之际出版。

“我当然没有预料到，一切都恰好在我出书的时候到了临界点，”他笑着说。

数据中心正在影响美国选举——它们是在不到两周内可能决定关键中期选举胜负的问题之一——而世界各地都有着抗争的历史。马克斯的书带领读者巡览科技行业对权力的追逐及其遭遇的反对，从越战期间针对美国计算机的反战抗议，到近年来爱尔兰和智利的抵制运动，再到新西兰关于数据中心未来的另类构想。

本周我与他聊了聊他所看到的一切，以及如果AI泡沫破裂可能会发生什么。

本次采访经过编辑和精简，以确保清晰。

莫莉·塔夫特：你是什么时候决定写一本关于数据中心的书的？

帕里斯·马克斯：荷兰和新加坡早在2019年就实施了暂停令。但到了2022年，越来越多的人开始意识到爱尔兰数据中心的用电需求，尤其是对电网的压力。那里的数据中心开始消耗巨量电力。

另一个真正引起我注意的事件是俄勒冈州达尔斯市谷歌的事情。谷歌极力隐藏其用水数据，甚至让市议会试图对其用水数据保密。他们维持了这一做法将近一年，直到社区最终拿到实际数字，发现谷歌使用了该社区29%的水资源。

ChatGPT在2022年底问世。很明显，生成式AI将需要更多的数据中心。这些地方已经感受到了大规模数据中心建设的影響，而这种感觉即将蔓延到更多社区。

我觉得很多美国人以为数据中心是一两年间突然在美国冒出来的，恰好赶上成为中期选举的重大议题。我喜欢你这本书的一点是，它向我们展示了其他国家和社区如何充当了早期预警信号。

爱尔兰就是一个真实的案例，展示了可能发生什么。都柏林在2021年通过了暂停令。实际上是电网运营商说的：“嘿，数据中心太多了。我们的电网容量不足以再接入更多了。”

对此，整个行业开始行动，以确保仍能在爱尔兰建设数据中心。他们在都柏林拿不到电网接入，于是开始考虑在爱尔兰其他地区建设。他们还开始接入天然气网络以使用发电机。最终，他们开始建造专用的天然气发电厂为数据中心供电，而不是接入电网。

爱尔兰电网是公共电网——只有公共事业公司才能建设电力线路。而数据中心企业实际上游说通过了立法，基本上允许私营公司建设电缆。这显然让很多人感到担忧，也引发了关于系统公平性的问题。

天然气这部分在美国眼下发生的事情面前显得极具先见之明——各公司正竞相为数据中心建设巨型私营天然气发电厂。

（数据中心运营商）从爱尔兰环境保护局获得排放许可证，以便燃烧所有这些化石燃料。该机构警告说，现在要实现气候目标将困难得多。

当我开始看到美国出现这种情况时，我并不惊讶。我已经看过这个剧本上演了。但其规模令人震惊，升级速度之快也令人咋舌。

如果这个行业崩盘，那些正在建设的实体基础设施——从天然气发电厂到数据中心本身——会怎样？历史上有先例吗？

我认为我们正处于AI泡沫之中。但泡沫破裂会是什么样子？他们计划建设所有这些数据中心和所有这些天然气发电厂来为数据中心供电。但在获取涡轮机、芯片以及数据中心本身各种拼图组件方面都存在問題。在AI需求被重新评估之前，这些东西真的能建完吗？

我们经常谈论互联网泡沫时代光纤容量的过度建设。但当时也有数据中心的建设——显然处于比现在早得多的阶段。大量数据中心公司倒闭了。像Equinix这样存活下来的公司收购了大量数据中心，为容量回归时做好准备。

但我们现在面临的问题是，如果数据中心是为AI用途而规划的，而我们假设芯片几年内就得淘汰更换。即使数据中心还在，它最有价值的部分在需求回归时可能已经不再有用了。

不可避免的是，即使数据中心没建成，那些天然气发电厂也会存在。它们会寻找新客户来证明自身存在的合理性。我确信人们建这些电厂不是打算直接关掉的。

你在书的结尾写了一个新西兰的具体案例——一个社区主导的项目，用当地云服务商托管数据，为毛利语创建更准确的语音识别模型。我非常喜欢这种非榨取式利用AI力量的另类构想。你有没有想过我们可以做些什么来推动改变，以及这种建设浪潮该如何引导？

我希望各国政府真正下大力气，对数据中心的发展实施更严格的监管。但这些监管也应该与对AI产品本身的监管相配套。关于生成式AI将带来什么，我们听过很多承诺，但都没有实现。这些技术还带来了一长串的危害，而这些是我们事先并未被告知的。我们的政府似乎并不太愿意真正面对这些问题。他们仍在相信生成式AI还是2023年初萨姆·奥尔特曼推销的那个样子，而不是它今天已经变成的样子。

我认为我们确实需要思考如何以不同的方式做技术，尤其是在这个我们为支撑生成式AI的基础设施投入如此之多资源的时刻。我们应该问：我们到底需要多少算力？投入多少资源到这个项目中才是合理的？我们从中真正得到了什么？硅谷所创造的东西，真的值得我们集体牺牲这些资源去实现它吗？如果我们真正做一番评估，我认为我们会非常清楚地发现，无论从财务角度还是从社会和环境角度，我们目前的做法都是无法被合理化的。

我们在写什么

说到那些气候目标，不只是爱尔兰政府在考虑这些问题。我的同事乔尔·哈利勒报道了欧盟对AI的渴求如何与欧洲各国的气候目标发生冲突。乔尔告诉我，随着明年各国举行选举，如果数据中心像在美国一样成为欧洲的政治引爆点，他一点也不会感到意外。“欧洲数据中心建设最引人入胜之处在于各种利益冲突的交织：国家层面的政策与地方优先事项相抵触，经济增长的雄心与气候目标相矛盾，规划官僚体制阻碍了AI公司快速扩张其机群的尝试，”他说。“很难看出欧洲怎么可能两全其美。”

我们在读什么

• 《纽约时报》报道了AI和数据中心热潮如何提振了一种令人意想不到的大宗商品：灰色涂料。
• 得克萨斯州大规模的数据中心建设威胁到该州多年来在减少空气污染方面取得的进展。《得克萨斯论坛报》有详细报道。
• 谷歌为在芬兰清理超过800英亩森林而未获得必要环境许可道歉，该项目是价值1300万欧元的数据中心项目的一部分。《卫报》报道称，这家科技巨头在该国面临强烈反弹，可能影响到明年春季的选举。

评论

返回顶部

英文来源：

Paris Marx’s new book couldn’t have landed at a better time. The longtime critic of Big Tech and host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast has been thinking about data centers for years, and Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires comes out right as opposition hits a fever pitch.
“I certainly didn't predict that it was all going to kind of come to a head as my book was coming out,” he says with a laugh.
While data centers are playing a role in shaping US elections—they’re one of the issues that could decide key midterm races in less than two weeks—there’s a history of struggle around the world. Marx’s book takes the reader on a tour of the tech industry’s quest for power and its opposition, from antiwar protests targeting American computers during the Vietnam War, to more recent resistance in Ireland and Chile, and an alternative vision for the future of data centers in New Zealand.
I caught up with him this week to talk about what he’s seen, and what could happen if the AI bubble pops.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
MOLLY TAFT: When did you decide to write a book about data centers?
PARIS MARX: In the Netherlands and Singapore, they had moratoriums going back to 2019. But in 2022, there was a growing recognition of the demands of data centers in Ireland, on the energy grid in particular. There were huge quantities of electricity that data centers were starting to consume over there.
The other story that really got on my radar was what happened with Google in The Dalles, Oregon. Google was really trying to hide its water use figures, to the degree that it got the city council to try to keep its water use figures secret. They kept that going for the better part of a year before the community finally got the actual numbers and found out that Google was using 29 percent of the water in the community.
ChatGPT came out at the end of 2022. It became apparent that there's going to need to be a lot more data centers for generative AI. These places were already feeling the effects of significant data center construction, and it felt like that was going to start coming to a lot more communities very soon.
I feel like a lot of Americans think data centers just came out of the blue in the US over the past year or two, just in time to be this huge midterms issue. One thing I like about your book is that it shows us how other countries and communities served as early warning signs.
Ireland was a real example of what can happen. Dublin had a moratorium passed back in 2021. It was actually the grid operator that said, “Hey, there are too many data centers. We do not have the grid capacity to connect any more of them.”
In response to that, you had the industry moving to make sure it can still build data centers in Ireland. They can't get grid connections in Dublin, so they start looking at building in other parts of Ireland. They also looked at starting to tap into the gas network so they can use generators. Eventually, they start building dedicated gas power plants to power their data centers instead of connecting to the grid.
The Irish energy grid is a public grid—only the public utility can build electricity lines. And data center companies actually lobbied for legislation that essentially allows private companies to build electricity cables. That obviously concerns a lot of people and presents questions about equity in the system.
The gas stuff looks so prescient with what’s happening in the US now, where companies are racing to build these massive private gas power plants for data centers.
[Data center operators] were getting these emission licenses from the Irish Environmental Protection Agency to be able to burn all these fossil fuels. The agency was warning that climate targets are going to be a lot harder to achieve now.
When I started to see that happen in the US, I wasn’t surprised. I’d already seen the story play out before. But the scale of it is staggering, and how quickly it’s escalated.
What happens to the physical infrastructure—from the gas plants to the data centers themselves—that's getting built out if this industry falls apart? Is there historic precedent for that?
I think we're in an AI bubble. But what does the collapse of that bubble look like? They're planning to add all these data centers and all of these gas power plants in order to power the data centers. But there are issues with getting turbines, with getting chips, with getting different kinds of pieces of the puzzle for the data center itself. Are these even going to get built out before there’s a reassessment of the demand for AI?
We often talk about the excess build-out of fiber capacity back in the dotcom boom and bust. But there was also a build-out of data centers—obviously a much earlier stage than what we're at now. A lot of data center companies went under. Companies like Equinix, which did survive, bought up a ton of data centers to be ready for when that capacity returned.
But the issue we have now is that if data centers are being planned for AI use, and we’re operating under the assumption that the chips are going to have to be cycled out within a few years. Even if the data center is there, what makes it most valuable is potentially not going to be useful by the time that demand returns.
Inevitably, even if the data centers don't come, then those gas plants will exist. They will be looking for new customers to justify their existence. I'm sure that people are not building them with the intention to just shut them down.
You ended the book with a specific example in New Zealand of a community-led effort to create a more accurate speech-recognition model of the Māori language, using local cloud providers to host the data. I really liked this alternative vision of a non-extractive way to harness the powers of AI. Have you thought about what we could do to make some changes and how this build-out is going?
I would like to see governments go really hard on actually putting firmer regulations on the development of data centers. But those should also be paired with regulations on the AI products themselves. We had a lot of promises about what generative AI was going to deliver that haven't been realized. There has also been a long list of harms that have arisen from these technologies that we were not told would come along with them. Our governments do not seem to be so willing to actually take that on. They're buying the narrative that generative AI is still what Sam Altman sold it to be in early 2023 rather than what it has become today.
I think that we do need to be thinking of how we do technology differently, especially in this moment where we're dedicating so many resources to the infrastructure to enable generative AI. We should be asking, how much computation do we really need? How many resources are actually justifiable to put into this project? What are we actually getting out of it, right? Does what we're getting from what Silicon Valley is creating really justify the resources that we are collectively sacrificing in order to realize it? If we actually did the assessment, I think that we would very clearly find that there's no way to justify what we are doing right now—from a financial perspective, but also from a social and environmental one.
What We’re Writing
Speaking of those climate targets, it’s not just the Irish government that’s thinking about them. My colleague Joel Khalil covers how the European Union’s thirst for AI is running into European countries’ climate goals. Joel tells me he wouldn’t be surprised if data centers become a political flash point in Europe, like they are in the US, as countries go to the polls next year. “The fascinating thing about the European data center build-out is the collision of competing interests: national-level policy butts up against local priorities, ambitions for economic growth stand in conflict with climate objectives, and planning bureaucracy foils attempts by AI companies to rapidly expand their fleets,” he says. “It’s hard to see how Europe could possibly have it all.”
What We’re Reading

• The New York Times covers how the AI and data center boom is boosting a surprising commodity: gray paint.
• The massive build-out of data centers in Texas threatens years of progress in the state cutting air pollution. The Texas Tribune has more.
• Google has apologized for clearing more than 800 acres of forest in Finland without getting the necessary environmental permits to build part of a €13 million data center project. The Guardian reports that the tech giant is facing backlash in the country that could bleed into elections next spring.
  Comments
  Back to top