It seems there are three opin­ions in T&T about AI da­ta cen­tres be­ing built here. The ma­jor­i­ty have no opin­ion, ex­cept for those who some­how be­lieve it will im­prove In­ter­net ser­vice so they could watch the next World Cup bet­ter. Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers and politi­cians who have de­cid­ed this is the next up­grade to the oil and gas in­dus­tries and will dra­mat­i­cal­ly bring mil­lions of US dol­lars in­to the coun­try. Then the usu­al mot­ley group of dis­sat­is­fied op­po­nents of every­thing, cli­mate sup­port­ers, con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, an­ti-vaxxers, “flat world the­o­rists” and or­di­nary peo­ple who just want to know the facts about what is planned.

Is it true that these mon­strosi­ties (AI cam­pus­es span from 300 to over 1,000 acres, look­ing more like in­dus­tri­al parks than sin­gle build­ings) con­sume enor­mous quan­ti­ties of wa­ter? How are we go­ing to sup­port that in a coun­try where on­ly 25% of the pop­u­la­tion have 24-hour ac­cess to wa­ter? Do they use huge quan­ti­ties of elec­tric­i­ty in a coun­try very fa­mil­iar with pow­er out­ages? Is it true that af­ter they are built, AI da­ta cen­tres func­tion with no more than a hand­ful of work­ers, 100-200 spe­cialised peo­ple?

In­to this bac­cha­nal comes the idea of dan­ger to the health of the peo­ple who will live in the ar­eas sur­round­ing these cen­tres. So here’s a sum­ma­ry of the known ef­fects on chil­dren so far, re­mem­ber­ing that it’s on­ly been a few years since this sort of thing has been hap­pen­ing and it takes about 30 years for a can­cer to be de­tect­ed af­ter the ini­tial can­cer­ous in­sult to the body’s cells.

The re­search so far points to dam­age to the res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem, to brain de­vel­op­ment and if that wasn’t enough to make you pause and re­flect, there’s the ef­fect on wa­ter sup­ply and wa­ter pol­lu­tion, noise pol­lu­tion, light pol­lu­tion and their ef­fect on sleep and the com­bined ef­fect of these on work and school per­for­mance.

AI da­ta cen­tres re­quire vast amounts of un­in­ter­rupt­ed pow­er. Be­cause they fre­quent­ly strain lo­cal grids, tech com­pa­nies of­ten re­ly on on-site fos­sil-fu­el gen­er­a­tion or diesel back­up gen­er­a­tors, which emit lo­calised tox­ins which af­fect the lung func­tion of any­one with­in one mile of the cen­tre. Chil­dren have faster breath­ing rates and de­vel­op­ing lungs, mak­ing them hy­per-vul­ner­a­ble to these par­ti­cles. These emis­sions are an­nu­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for over half a mil­lion new cas­es and 1,300 pre­ma­ture deaths of asth­ma in the US. Asth­ma is a huge prob­lem right now in T&T. We do not need an­oth­er trig­ger for fur­ther res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness.

Sec­ond, it ap­pears there is an in­creased risk of neu­rode­vel­op­ment con­di­tions like AD­HD and autism de­vel­op­ing in chil­dren liv­ing near these cen­tres and which are al­so re­lat­ed to these air pol­lu­tants, fine par­tic­u­late mat­ter, car­bon monox­ide, ni­tro­gen ox­ide etc.

AI com­pu­ta­tion gen­er­ates an ex­treme amount of heat, re­quir­ing mil­lions of gal­lons of wa­ter dai­ly for evap­o­ra­tive cool­ing. Lack of an ad­e­quate na­tion­al wa­ter sup­ply is al­ready stress­ful. AI cen­tres will make things worse, in­creas­ing the stress on peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly preg­nant, post­par­tum and breast­feed­ing moth­ers. An in­crease in pre­ma­ture births and gas­troin­testi­nal ill­ness is like­ly.

In ad­di­tion, wa­ter dis­charged from da­ta cen­tre cool­ing loops con­tains chem­i­cal an­ti-cor­ro­sives or bio­cides. If dis­charged poor­ly, it risks leach­ing in­to wa­ter ta­bles and af­fect­ing drink­ing wa­ter safe­ty.

Da­ta cen­tre cool­ing fans and in­dus­tri­al ma­chin­ery pro­duce low-fre­quen­cy noise pol­lu­tion all day. Con­tin­u­ous en­vi­ron­men­tal noise in­duces chron­ic stress, rais­es cor­ti­sol, and se­vere­ly dis­rupts sleep cy­cles in chil­dren, which im­pairs their dai­ly cog­ni­tive and school per­for­mance.

In ad­di­tion to noise, these fa­cil­i­ties pro­duce high-in­ten­si­ty, all-night light­ing, which cre­ates lo­calised light pol­lu­tion and adds to the dis­rup­tion of nat­ur­al night sleep.

The trend now in de­vel­oped coun­tries is to stop build­ing da­ta cen­tres and build them in less de­vel­oped coun­tries. Last week, the gov­er­nors of two im­por­tant but po­lit­i­cal­ly dis­tinct US states, New York and Texas, halt­ed the build­ing of such cen­tres.

Politi­cians and their busi­ness mas­ters in T&T will ar­gue that the fa­cil­i­ties will be built far from homes. Is there any­where in T&T that is far? Or that the new­er da­ta cen­tres use less wa­ter and do not make much noise? Even so, the en­er­gy and med­ical prob­lems re­main and we have not been told how “new” our cen­tres will be.

De­r­ick Boo­choon, from Ot­tawa, Cana­da, sum­marised the prob­lem nice­ly in Fri­day’s T&T Guardian when he wrote: “Be­fore ma­jor AI in­fra­struc­ture is ap­proved, cit­i­zens should see the wa­ter plan, the pow­er plan, the en­vi­ron­men­tal plan, the jobs plan and the pub­lic ben­e­fit plan.”

As of right now, with the in­for­ma­tion we have, AI cen­tres do not look ad­van­ta­geous to any­one, far less our chil­dren.