AI seems to have squeezed itself into a common place within everyday life, seemingly overnight. With its variety of applications and ease of use, it's no mystery as to why. To many people, the widespread nature of its implementation, the suite of capabilities and accessibility of AI makes it an easy option to turn to. But such a seemingly strong technology does come with a cost, particularly to the environment and the communities that exist around AI infrastructure.
Take, for example, the data center currently under construction in Rubbertown, a district of Louisville, Kentucky known for its high pollution from the factories and industrial plants located within it. Being constructed in collaboration between Poe Companies and Powerhouse Data Centers, the location was chosen due to several factors, including its proximity to the Ohio River, the availability of power through LG&E, and because of HB 775 (2025), which provides tax exemptions to qualifying data centers. This has raised concerns from residents in the area over the impact it would have; not only on the district, but the city as a whole.
This anxiety over data centers has to do with how they operate. AI generates text, videos, and responds to queries by taking whatever text is input and transfers it into tokens, little blocks of data that the AI can read. The AI then uses these tokens, performs thousands of calculations using them and a database filled with millions of topics, and then returns an answer to the user.
All of this happens within the span of a few seconds, however the cost of this procedure is that it can cause the computers that AI relies on to overheat quickly. In order to combat this, liquid cooling methods are used to keep temperatures down. But the scale of data centers means that water eventually needs to be evaporated and new water drawn in to prevent the build up of bacteria or minerals. Of course, water that is evaporated in this manner will eventually return to the environment through the water cycle, however this process happens slowly and an over reliance on drawing freshwater can mean that more water is used than can be replaced. Overuse of water such as in cases like this have been a major contributor to the water crisis that at least 2 billion people are subjected to as of 2025.
Besides water, data centers also consume a tremendous amount of power. According to MIT data centers could require up to 5 gigawatts of power, “more than the total power demand from the state of New Hampshire”. This in turn leaves a massive carbon footprint on the environment, which would worsen the environment in an area like Rubbertown that already experiences a great deal of pollution already. The health effects that this would have on the community there, if the data center is managed callously, would be disastrous.
However, there are ways to go about managing a data center that would mitigate the harm done to the residents and the surrounding area. Tracking water usage, making AI calculations more efficient, and restricting features like image and video generation would help to make significant strides towards reducing the overall carbon impact of artificial intelligence. Investing in renewable and clean energy sources such as wind, water and solar energy would help curb carbon emissions as well.
Despite all of the known negative impacts with AI in regards to the environment, it's still an incredibly profitable technology for the people on top of it. NVIDIA, a company focused on developing and selling computer hardware, is currently the most profitable company on the stock market, with a market cap of approximately 5 trillion dollars. A large amount of this money is from data centers purchasing their GPU’s, which help to process larger amounts of data. Governments globally have been investing heavily into AI as well, through tax cuts, loans, or even through direct funding.
Regulations and care can make AI the kind of technology that will spring all of humanity forward towards the future. Yet the devastating impacts on the planet cannot be ignored, and continuing to implement this technology so recklessly will surely have dire consequences.