AI data centers have been popping up like mushrooms across the planet. While you may think this has nothing to do with you, the presence of these facilities could directly affect your life. These buildings require enormous amounts of energy and can create serious environmental impacts on the communities around them. Many residents who live next to data centers have reported their utility bills rising unexpectedly. New Mexico citizens, in particular, need to pay attention as Project Jupiter moves forward, with Oracle and OpenAI planning to build large-scale data centers in the state to power their AI systems.
The main concern that many critics have raised is the location Project Jupiter chose to build its data centers near Sunland Park and Santa Teresa in New Mexico. It is well known that AI data centers demand a lot of water to operate, yet the corporations decided to build in a desert area. Critics argue that this would negatively impact nearby communities that are already struggling to access safe drinking water.
Not only that, but these AI data centers would also increase the greenhouse gas emissions of New Mexico. In fact, critics claim the projected emissions would be so large that they would exceed the emissions produced by Las Cruces and Albuquerque combined per month.
Critics also pointed out that the reason Project Jupiter picked this spot in New Mexico was due to the fact that those who lived nearby were people of color and minorities who did not have strong political influence.
Not all is doom and gloom, however. If you are against Project Jupiter in New Mexico, there is still time to speak up via the official state website. The deadline is March 2 at midnight. The hope is that if enough people protest against Project Jupiter, a public hearing would be held where community members could fight against this decision.
Many Reddit users on the New Mexico subreddit were outraged after hearing what OpenAI and Oracle were planning with Project Jupiter. Many found the decision ridiculous, saying it was easy to see how harmful the impact of data centers would be to the environment and nearby communities. “Keep fighting, we’re doing the same thing here in Tucson. The desert is dry!” one user wrote.
Others began to argue that AI should just be abandoned altogether as it provided no actual benefits to people aside from corporations and scammers. “Besides Internet brain rot, what is AI actually producing? My brother’s company tried to implement their own AI bot for doing number crunching. When they looked at the numbers they were all off, and when asked to provide the sources for the data it turns out the AI just made it all up. So what is AI actually doing besides Internet brain rot?” one redditor said.
