Major tech companies–OpenAI (GPT), Google (Gemini), Anthropic (Claude), Meta (Llama), and xAI (Grok)–are spending heavily to boost the computing power of their respective large language artificial intelligence (AI) models.  The companies claim that this spending will transform them into systems that businesses will happily pay to use and, in the near future, lead to artificial general intelligence powered machines capable of autonomously solving problems and making decisions far better than humans.

This effort has produced a data center building boom, largely the hyperscale data centers needed to train and run such advanced systems.  In fact, annual spending on data center construction (a figure that does not include the cost of the servers or land) now equals the yearly spending on office building construction and should overtake it next year.  These hyperscale data centers are enormous.  For example, OpenAI’s Stargate data center complex in Abilene, Texas is large enough to be seen from space.

Hyperscale data centers are a social and ecological disaster and communities across the country are now organizing to stop their construction and operation. The costs are too high even if the large language models they are designed to support were socially beneficial.  But that is not the case.  These models are unreliable, socially dangerous, generally undermine rather than enhance worker capacities, rely on exploited labor for their training and operation, and are a technological dead-end.  Moreover, as the New York Times reports, research by McKinsey & Company finds that “nearly eight in 10 companies have reported using generative AI, but just as many have reported ‘no significant bottom-line impact.’”

We need all-hands-on-deck to stop the high-tech assault on our lives and that includes publicizing the costs of these hyperscale data centers and supporting the community resistance movement.