‘We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres
www.theguardian.com
In 1993, she squeezed a $333m settlement from a Californian energy company in a scandal over contaminated water. Three decades later, she has a new target in her sights – and it’s global

. According to analysis by the Guardian, two-thirds of planned datacentres in the US are in drought-stricken areas. The larger centres need up to 5m gallons of water a day for cooling, equivalent to the average usage of 50,000 people. It is unclear what the plan is and whose needs will take priority between AI, agriculture and everyone else.

“People are reporting bill spikes,” [Erin]Brockovich says, reading an email from someone who says their monthly water bill went from $22 (£17) to more than $350 (£265). The threat of these centres is about more than money – it feels existential. “How will the water use disrupt the balance of nature? People are asking: “What will happen to us?”

  • BJW@lemmus.orgEnglish
    0·
    23 hours ago

    Shhh…you want an angry mob after you?!

    Uh… She meant to say that AI requires blood sacrifices of fully hydrated babies, and once the AI ingests the blood water it’s gone forever. We need to get our pitch forks and put an end to the demonic sacrifices! We don’t need no hallucinations, plagiarized slop and climate-change-causing demons in our computers! Ban AI and kill it before it can lay it’s eggs!

    Okay, you should be good now. Just nod along, and never ever admit to having used AI, or even think about informing people there are positives to using it or there are worse things to do than use it.

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
      0·
      18 hours ago

      Some people finding AI the technology useful doesn’t justify this massive all-in rollout of data centers. Sure it’s their money, but they’re using all our resources to build stuff that no one asked for, and actively making life shittier for many many people.

      It’s even mentioned in the article

      This isn’t a story about AI, she says. “That genie is out of the bottle: it’s here, it’s an effective tool, you can use it or not,” Brockovich says matter-of-factly. This is about the massive structures being built to house the vast computing facilities AI requires. These datacentres, she says, stretch over “hundreds and hundreds of acres”. In May, Utah gave approval to a centre twice the size of Manhattan.