Post #3263358

2026-06-10 08:42 UTC

Today I learned that there is an AI data center being built in the Indian city of Raipur, where I used to live. Raipur is very hot (Wikipidia says the record high is 47.9C), and I'm pretty sure that doesn't take the effect of humidity into account. It wasn't always this hot, but it gets a little worse each year and that has added up. The majority of the city's electricity is sourced from coal power plants, and for a variety of reasons its grid is not especially stable, with particularly frequent blackouts during the rainy season. That often means that there's no AC during the most humid and second-hottest time of the year. It is dry year-round except for those few months of monsoons, when the local groundwater reserves are replenished. Despite the intensity of those storms, there have been progressively worse water shortages every year. I've done a lot of rooftop gardening there to reduce the urban heat island effect, and I've watched all but the most heat and drought-resistant plants wither and die. At times water was being brought in by tanker trucks and there just wasn't enough for both human use and the whole garden. I find it difficult to imagine a worse place to build an AI data center, and yet here we are. They are going to burn coal to power the AI chips and cooling rigs during heat waves and water shortages that are already literally deadly to the people living there. This is the sort of thing people are justifying when they talk about how much more productive they are thanks to their spicy corporate autocomplete. The anger that I feel is not some abstract moral high ground, but a visceral reaction to having gone outside in deadly climate conditions to spread an insufficient amount of water on my dying plants. When they say that AI is the future, this is what that actually means.

Replies (10)

@otfrom@functional.cafe 2026-06-10 10:18

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog this is the bit Kim Stanley Robinson left out of Ministry for the Future. When the massive heat death event happens at the beginning of the book, he leaves out that the data centres are humming, cool, and guarded. Running on their own gas powered generators and throwing out heat and pollution.

Open ##3404390
@sol_hsa@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-06-10 10:44

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog If Sarkar Raj is to be believed, there may be teensy bit of corruption going on.

Open ##3404391
@NatureMC@mastodon.online 2026-06-10 11:02

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog tagging ⬆️ with #ClimateCrisis #ClimateDiary #waterSafety #heatwaves #drought 👁️ @gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green

Open ##3404392
@Aryan@dragonscave.space 2026-06-10 11:10

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog O hell no. India is pritty hot as it is.

Open ##3404393
@cobalt123@beige.party 2026-06-10 11:39

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog @NatureMC@mastodon.online The article makes this project sound like it is a great location and the geography perfect. Surely many people realize this is not an idyllic setting and will bring great hardship to those living nearby. It sounds like it is to bring expanded numbers of residents and 3,000 jobs? But the wording of the jobs seems a bit vague as to where the jobs are and what kind of jobs they are. These people will live here. Maybe you can clarify: “Creates 3,000+ direct and indirect jobs while driving AI and data science upskilling”.

Open ##3404394
@tty@sunbeam.city 2026-06-10 15:18

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog I really appreciated reading this. I don't think I realized how bad it's already gotten. 💔

Open ##3404395
@joby@hachyderm.io 2026-06-10 15:52

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog that’s a thing that’s been constantly baffling me. Not only are we building a ridiculous number of data centers, we’re consistently building them in just incredibly stupid places. Like the newest one near me is in a desert town that we’ve KNOWN is overdrawing their aquifer for 40 years. Yet they just keep sinking more municipal wells and giving more water to corporations for essentially nothing in return. They built a damn bottled water factory too!

Open ##3404396
@joriki@infosec.exchange 2026-06-10 16:54

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog looking at the "AI riots" square on my bingo card

Open ##3404398
@CorioPsicologia@mastodon.social 2026-06-10 18:47

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog This journalist is covering the story in India: https://restofworld.org/2026/india-data-center-tax-holiday-farmer-protests-ai/

Open ##3404399
@myerman@turtleisland.social 2026-06-11 04:30

@ansuz@gts.cryptography.dog I find it utterly unsurprising that these asshats are going after the historically colonized folks and areas in the efforts to make a few bucks

Open ##3404400