In the newest wave of the AI revolution, there are plans to create three large data centers around Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal.
The data centers would be a part of a larger $500 billion project called Stargate, a development run and funded primarily by OpenAI and SoftBank, according to OpenAI.
Though the project sites have yet to be fully confirmed, Wisconsin is on the shortlist of states to be considered for the project, aiming to establish five to 10 centers, according to the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal.
Ethical implications of AI have a wide-ranging scope, Annette Zimmermann — University of Wisconsin Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Professor of Statistics — said. One of the foremost concerns being the land and resource use, especially if the sites will be on or around native lands, she said.
“Even if this didn’t happen exactly on tribal lands, there could be a kind of cascading damaging environmental effect that affects like surrounding areas,” Zimmermann said. “And so, that would obviously be hard to contain.”
Several ethical concerns regarding the potential location of the data centers have been raised, Zimmermann said. For instance, Wisconsin is an ideal location for such centers, as cooling would create less energy demand than a data center in Texas, she said.
The movement away from the global south where many data centers have been developed creates a net that absorbs any potential risk at the domestic level, Zimmermann said.
In 2023, Google built a data center in Uruguay and in the same year, the country had the biggest drought in 75 years, Zimmermann said.
“People were literally in danger of thirst, people were out on the street protesting because they didn’t have access to clean water, just so that American companies could innovate … these are horrible injustices that happen when American actors try to put their data center somewhere else,” Zimmermann said.
Beyond the physical location of the data center, there are significant social and political ramifications from the centers and the development of AI at large.
The promises of the creation of new mid to high level jobs may spark excitement for certain citizens, but because of a “democratic legitimacy deficient,” there is little understanding of how citizens truly feel about the rapid development of AI, Zimmermann said.
“American politics is in a deep entanglement between tech industry practitioners and democratically elected representatives,” Zimmermann said. “Many experts are concerned about such close collaborations … We only really want the people who are democratically authorized in a direct way … making really important judgment calls.”
The issue of rapid development is just as encompassing as climate change or other value-based political points, Zimmermann said.
The call for civic engagement, following AI policy and understanding its implications, is imperative as AI continues to evolve, Zimmermann said. Allowing citizens to understand that they can and should take part in the discussion of AI development will begin to create a conversation of ethics around AI.
“We need to get to the point where regular citizens similarly feel empowered to voice a value-based stance on AI issues,” Zimmermann said. “All of these are normative questions, not just empirical questions. Changing citizens’ beliefs that this is something that they can participate in and voice opinions about is important.”