4 days ago
America's ghost cities where trillion-dollar beasts the size of Manhattan devour all your secrets
Across rural America, a new kind of giant has arrived - windowless, brick-like monoliths housing the world's digital brains.
The likes of Meta, Amazon and Tesla are snapping up vast tracts of land the size of Manhattan to build sprawling AI data centers that can cost upwards of $3 billion.
But their arrival brings serious challenges for families living in their shadows, as the centers guzzle massive amounts of water and electricity.
These unsightly buildings are also the poster children of a seismic shift in the economy that experts warn will lead to widespread job losses.
If there was ever doubt about the impact of AI's stratospheric growth on office jobs, the latest government figures on private company construction spending tell a clear story.
When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, investment in office space to house workers was five times greater than spending on data centers.
Today, as the graph below shows, the two are nearly neck and neck.
This isn't a coincidence. AI-driven automation is already replacing jobs, as recent layoffs at Amazon, Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, and others reveal — with fears the trend will only accelerate.
For months, Wall Street executives have openly discussed plans to replace white-collar Americans with cost-cutting AI robots.
Meanwhile, a report out last week showed layoffs in July had risen 140 percent from a year ago - with AI cited as a major factor.
The turn to AI is also sucking up resources from local communities.
'It feels like we're fighting an unwinnable battle that we didn't sign up for,' Beverly Morris, 71, a resident in Newton County, Georgia, told The New York Times.
In 2018, Facebook-owner Meta built a data center a thousand feet from her home. Since then, the Morris family has struggled to get enough water from their well to use the toilets, sinks, or dishwasher.
When water does reach their home, it often leaves behind a brown residue. Morris received a $25,000 quote to fix the issue but can't afford the repairs.
'I'm scared to drink our own water,' she said.
Meta officials claim their water use isn't affecting Morris's property, citing a local water analysis they conducted.
But local authorities are raising alarms: Newton County, with a population just over 100,000, is expected to run completely dry by 2030.
The Georgia community is not alone. Thirsty data centers - which are training on data from American consumers - are sucking up municipal water, leaving a wake of problems for residents in drought-prone areas.
For example, millions of Texans have been advised to take shorter showers as parts of the state face a shortage.
Meanwhile, multiple data centers, including a San-Antonio-based facility run by Microsoft and the US Army Corps churned through 463 million gallons of water in 2023 and 2024.
Concerns are also growing that the energy grid is not prepared for AI's gargantuan power needs.
Studies by the International Energy Agency showed that the centers alone are expected to burn through 945 terawatt-hours of energy each year by 2030.
That's more energy than the country of Japan uses in a full year.
'AI is one of the biggest stories in the energy world today,' Fatih Birol, the agency's executive director said.
In cities that have already been experiencing water issues, like this water break in Texas, centers are exacerbating local droughts
Despite questions around resource dependence, major companies are pouring money into even bigger facilities with even more job-displacing capabilities.
Meta, which plans to spend $72 billion on AI in 2025, is building two massive data centers in the US, named Prometheus and Hyperion.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, compared the scale of Hyperion to New York City's 14,600-acre Manhattan borough in a post on Threads.
Its nearly the same size.
'We're building multiple more titan clusters as well,' the social media boss said on his platform.
'Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.'
