OP-ED: Stop calling data centers job creators
Artificial intelligence and the massive data centers that will fuel them is now a local issue.
Hanover Township residents have turned out en masse to hear about a proposal to build 1.8 million square feet of data center space at the Starpointe Industrial Park and a gas power plant to run it. And Fayette County residents have heard about plans to build a much larger facility: a $13 billion project for a gas power plant at an abandoned coal mine to fuel … well, we don’t quite know yet, but another enormous data center would be a good guess.
Our county commissioners and chamber of commerce – and until recently, our governor – have trumpeted the huge economic opportunities these data centers can bring. But the numbers just don’t support this.
Texas-based Prime Data Centers plans to build its complex on the 155 acres it is purchasing in Starpointe Business Park near Burgettstown. They can’t build it in Texas because that state’s governor has enacted a moratorium of data centers. So, the company has chosen a site in an area that could use an economic boost, in a county accustomed to having its resources exploited, first by the coal industry and then by the oil and gas industry in the 19th and 20th centuries, and again by the Marcellus gas industry in the 21st century. It’s the gas being drawn from this area now that will fuel the power plant.
Construction of the seven buildings should not take long, considering that they are basically barns full of electronic equipment that require no human comfort, like windows, restrooms or showers. The company states that about 300 people may be involved in the construction, and that there will be 40 to 60 permanent positions when the complex is fully operational.
That 40 to 60 estimate is roughly equivalent to the number of workers at a typical McDonald’s restaurant. So, how does this benefit us economically?
But at least the Starpointe project will be privately funded; the NextEra project not far from Brownsville is another story. Money for that project will be coming from the U.S. Department of Commerce, as directed by the Trump administration. So, we the taxpayers will be paying to construct a generating plant to supply electricity to some industrial user to be chosen by the U.S. and Japan.
According to a report in this newspaper, the permitting process for the plant will not be completed until 2030, but construction may begin in 2027. If you’re thinking that the cart can’t go before the horse, just remember how Donald Trump’s ballroom project began.
As enormous as this project is, NextEra (it began as Florida Power and Light) envisions the creation of only 100 permanent jobs. That’s about the number of workers at a McDonald’s and a Burger King.
AI may indeed bring great benefits to humanity, but not without cost. The great technological achievement of splitting the atom gave us a clean source of power, but also nuclear weapons capable of destroying all life on our planet. We must proceed with the greatest degree of caution. Relieving humans of the necessity to think and make decisions on their own is a recipe for species extinction.
Proponents of AI argue that its primary purpose is to solve problems at a speed which humans could never achieve and to relieve them of mundane tasks. But for many Americans, those mundane tasks are their jobs.
Our civic leaders need to stop calling data centers job creators. Their purpose is just the opposite.
Park Burroughs is the retired executive editor of the Observer-Reporter, and lives in South Franklin.