On top of using inefficient and dirty power sources, they also suck up all the local water, produce heat domes (pollution) and noise pollution at registers that causes psychological issues.
Getting 10% off a subscription to a shitty LLM that doesn’t can’t do anything properly, doesn’t offset that.
That noise pollution bullshit is quite literally the same scare tactics used against wind farms. It’s completely false.
Data centres, like other large industrial facilities often have cooling equipment/HVAC installed on the outside of the building.
That shit is loud if it doesnt have proper sound proofing installed.
I live about 750m away from a factory that didn’t have the soundproofing until I got the local council enforcement team involved. At my front door and in our bedroom the noise level was averaging around 60db if we left the windows open (which wasnt an option in warm weather).
You’re proving my point, these datacenters are not any different than almost any other industry. From factories to airports, they’re the same or sometimes worse than datacenters. Yet everyone is screaming about datacenters, despite most of them not even being built near residential areas.
Except this one isn’t. AC units make a lot of noise. AC units for a server game the size of a mall, make a fuck ton
A slowly spinning turbine, not so much.
Do you know what makes a lot of noise? Airports. Trains. Cars. Factories. The AC Unit on your own fucking house.
We build and operate all of those, even in residential areas.
Datacenters are not unique, not even the big ones. The noise they put out usually doesn’t travel more than a couple of thousand feet, and the biggest “mall” sized data centers are not being built within a couple of thousand feet of houses.
Hilariously, some of the largest datacenters like the ones Google has in Ohio had no significant noise complaints until AI noise complaints hit the news. https://datacenters.newalbanyohio.org/resident-questions/
Over the course of more than 15 years of data center development, specifically, New Albany is only aware of four noise complaints from an operational data center – all of which were resolved within days. In September of 2025, the City received consistent feedback from residents near Google’s New Albany campus about noisy exhaust fans.
Because it’s BULLSHIT.
These LLM datacenters aren’t your average datacenters. They’re not racks of mostly hard drives and cpus, they’re energy hog supercharged gpus that just vomit heat.
My single gpu PC can raise the temp of my office by like 10°. And it’s not even that impressive of a spec. The standard industrial sized cooling hasn’t cut it for these installations
You’re right that they use more power and generate more waste heat per square foot, however, they don’t build larger AC units for them they just use more total units. They are effectively limited in size based on transporting it to the site on a truck, and are the exact same units used in current data centers and other industries that need cooling like this.
You’re crazy as shit if you really think that.
I’m not going to do your research, but that link is a good start. Use your brain and stop eating paint chips.
Here’s some research that shows that Google’s largest datacenters didn’t receive any signficant noise complaints until 2025, despite existing for decades before that.
https://datacenters.newalbanyohio.org/resident-questions/
Over the course of more than 15 years of data center development, specifically, New Albany is only aware of four noise complaints from an operational data center – all of which were resolved within days. In September of 2025, the City received consistent feedback from residents near Google’s New Albany campus about noisy exhaust fans.
Yes, datacenters make Nosie, but so does almost everything else. Airports. Trains. Cars. Factories. The AC Unit on your own fucking house.
They aren’t special, and they aren’t even particularly bad compare to a lot of the other sources like Airports.
Yes, datacenters make Nosie, but so does almost everything else. Airports. Trains. Cars. Factories. The AC Unit on your own fucking house.
These you’re usually aware of when you move in. When you e lived in a place nearly all your life and now you’re subjected to the noise pollution, it’s a big change.
You can feel however you want, I’m near Ashburn, data center hell, and see it. New buildings popping up next to neighborhoods nearly weekly. Unless you’re near one, you don’t really have a say. NIMBY, right?
The other question is… Is it worth it? Risk people’s lives so you can generate a funny picture? Where’s the limit? Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. And with the very very limited laws regarding AI currently, and the negative impacts of people’s lives, I’m fully against it.
We’re the most productive weve every been in all of humanity with the current tools, wtf is AI going to do except help attackers and create more vulnerabilities with “vibe coding”. No thanks.
The pollution is off the fucking charts. And they’re going around laws and kicking people off their home electricity providers to take it over in Tahoe.
https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-residents-power-source/
A) Benn Jordan’s videos are pseudoscience bullshit not backed up by real science. Studies like https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10032045/ show no effect from Infrasound on sleep for example, while clearly proving that traffic noises DO affect sleep. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1260/0263-0923.28.2.79 shows that while it can be annoying, it needs to be really fucking loud to do so at these lower frequencies, far higher than HVAC units even hundreds of feet away would produce.
B) You don’t understand at all what these AI datacenters are being used for. It’s not for personal use for funny picture generation. The scale is required for actual work being performed, not the random ChatGPT queries of home users asking about what to buy their significant other for their birthday.
C) They will increase productivity further. If you have a problem with productivity returns not being shared properly with workers (which is a problem I have too) the answer is not to attack a method of further productivity increase, it’s to change the rules around how companies and shareholders are allowed to operate.
You don’t understand at all what these AI datacenters are being used for.
Don’t need to and don’t care. I see how the rush to build all these, politicians lying about how many jobs it’s going to create, people being displaced from their homes and jobs, environmental issues, etc. the list goes on. I can see the negative and be 1000% against them until there are actual laws regarding AI and the like. It’s a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.
Also AI very dumb. Even the overview on Google is very often wrong even in my basic searches of asking who voiced a character or played a role in a movie.
Tracking users faces in their cars, the number of people that have been wrongly arrested after AI decided they’re the suspect without a second thought, literally half way across a country, it’s all fucking crazy.
What’s wrong with using your brain? We were told to go to college and get educated. For what, to fight with AI bullshit taking over? Kids are dumb as shit, relying AI. Can you not see the issues all this is progressing? I don’t care what you can do with AI if it’s going to hurt so many people in the process. Slow the fuck down, let’s lay down some laws and be a little smarter about this rather than just destroy ecosystems en mass.
If those are the reasons you don’t want it, start with that up front. Don’t make bullshit claims about noise pollution or energy use.
New Albany DC is not right in the backyard of the neighborhoods either. Take a look at this one - https://maps.app.goo.gl/12D3xW1iPBjKKSRXA
Then all the others surrounding it…
That place already had massive sound issues, it’s directly under the primary flight path for Dulles Airport and only 3 miles away.
So let’s pile on? Also as I pointed out already, Dulles airport already existed so you knew you were getting into. Data center is being built all around your neighborhood is a complete change
It’s not “all around” and literally less than 100 houses are impacted. It’s situated in an industrial zoning area obviously with the grouping there, so maybe the anger should go towards the zoning rules and not the datacenter itself.
What have you done so far to research this?
Current computer technology turns electricity into mostly heat (and a tiny amount of math).
Data centers need lots of electricity, and lots of cooling.
Depending on how you solve the electricity and cooling problems you have different impacts.
Iceland geothermal for electric and cool air exchange is pretty minimal.
Phoenix natural gas jet engines and evaporative cooling, more impact.
Water is typically used in these large systems ina evaporative cooling system. Fresh clean water is literally evaporated into the air to remove heat. This isn’t great, fresh water is limited. It does go into the air so in theory it will return to the local water basin eventually.
Fun fact nuclear power plants have the same waste heat problem, which is why you often see them built next to huge water sources
And soon nuclear power plants will also be built right next to datacenters. All the big players are heavily invested in SMR reactors and there are like a half dozen under construction just to power datacenters right now.
Follow the electricity back to where it comes from.
