Even when they’re headquartered elsewhere within the Seattle space moderately than town correct, Microsoft and Amazon are two colossal tech corporations famously pouring umpteen zillion {dollars} per second into AI compute. Nonetheless, on Tuesday, Seattle handed a one-year ban on massive knowledge facilities.
In April, the Seattle Occasions reported that town’s electrical utility, Seattle Metropolis Gentle, was going through a knowledge heart drawback: 4 thriller corporations had been starting work on 5 separate massive knowledge heart tasks that may have drawn energy from the Seattle grid—sucking up 369 megawatts in a metropolis with solely a few gigawatt of capability. A Seattle Metropolis Gentle consultant, Andy Robust, informed the Occasions, “We solely have so many engineers. We solely have so many venture managers,” and added, “It’s going to have an effect.”
In line with a narrative final week within the Guardian, the information alarmed Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, who informed that paper, “That was the primary that I, because the mayor, had heard about this.” She and town council reportedly acquired 10,000 pro-moratorium emails from residents, and “had been pleased to maneuver towards a moratorium, particularly understanding that there was actually robust public assist on the market for that plan of action.”
The Guardian additionally claims that Seattle is the most important metropolis to this point to move such a measure. In line with a web site known as U.S. Knowledge Heart Moratorium Tracker (which, it must be famous, is a venture of the hedge fund Interconnected Capital) there have been 111 native knowledge heart moratoria, and 77 are at present energetic.
The Seattle moratorium handed unanimously, in accordance with a press launch on the Seattle Metropolis Council web site. “I’m grateful to the Metropolis Council for his or her work on this knowledge heart moratorium, and I look ahead to signing it into legislation,” Wilson says within the press launch.
Councilmember Eddie Lin provides within the launch:
“Seattleites shouldn’t be subsidizing document income of enormous firms from the AI increase. On the identical time, town hosts smaller co-location services that present knowledge processing for 911 name facilities, municipal actions, hospitals, universities, and most cancers analysis. We are able to assist these important companies whereas additionally growing acceptable safeguards round mega AI knowledge facilities domestically and regionally.”
As famous by the Occasions, the invoice lasts one yr, and freezes growth of information facilities past a dimension threshold positioned at about 20 megawatts. It additionally comes with the choice to tack an extra six months onto the moratorium. A separate, associated metropolis invoice handed on Tuesday requires an evaluation of information facilities’ energy, water, and land use, together with their impacts on residents’ well being and employment.
