Two Amazon employees on Wednesday publicly called for legislation on fresh data centers, telling elected officials in Seattle that the unchecked development of hotly contested artificial intelligence nerve centers threatens the region’s environment, economy and security.
“Local governments, in collaboration with community stakeholders, should set conditions for data center construction,” Amazon senior software engineer Liesl Wigand said at a city hearing. “Let’s not let big tech burn down Seattle to win the AI race.”
The comments by Wigand and fellow Amazon software engineer Patrick Schloesser show a significant escalation in the protest movement across the U.S. against the rapid construction of data centers over the past few years. While workers at several major tech companies, including Amazon, have complained about the negative impacts of data centers and the need for greater oversight, no one has done so publicly and explicitly before, according to union organizers supporting the effort in Seattle.
Schloesser, who has worked at Amazon for almost six years, said data centers should provide more renewable energy than they consume and provide energy storage to support the broader power grid. Schloesser also called for fresh taxes on tech companies and “worker-led security committees that report to the city” any artificial intelligence tools that “become a threat” to Seattle. Schloesser said tech companies are desperate to build data centers, which would give Seattle the opportunity to extract concessions from them.
Both employees who spoke out are members of a collective of current and former employees known as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, which has long advocated for the company to better address the environmental impact of its operations. Additional members of the group may speak at other city hearings where the data center one-year pause ordinance is scheduled to be debated, including later on Wednesday. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice is also calling on city officials to consult on data center policies with groups representing frontline workers, such as labor unions.
Technology companies and developers have announced plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build dozens of data centers across the United States to meet growing demand for AI chatbots and other generative AI technologies. Communities in almost every state organized against the projects, citing concerns about electricity and water utilize, toxic wasteharmful emissions, noise, tax breaks and whether artificial intelligence is a technology worth developing at all.
Amazon did not immediately provide comment before publication. Other tech giants, including Microsoft AND Googlehave recently tried to head off backlash against their data center projects and get ahead of potential regulation across the country by strengthening commitments to transparency and environmental protection.
In Seattle, city officials are weighing in one year break on permitting data centers to allow time for establishing project regulations. According to. Seattle currently has no data center regulations city records. City he said there are a few diminutive data centers there, but several companies have expressed interest in creating “large-scale” facilities. Their arrival he could drive up water and energy prices for other residents and augment carbon emissions, with the city currently having minimal powers to intervene.