Study examining how data centers construction likely to increase health harms believed to be among first of its kind
For all its promised benefits, the artificial-intelligence boom is likely to prove costly to public health and even lead to hundreds of deaths a year in the U.S. alone, and those harms are likely to disproportionately hit poorer communities, according to a California study believed to be among the first of its kind.
When it comes to who bears the public health costs of AI, “20% of the people are taking, like, 50% of the burden,” said Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside and one of the report’s co-authors. Already in 2023, air pollution related to powering U.S. data centers led to 360 premature deaths and total health costs of $5.6 billion across the nation, the researchers estimated. But those figures factored in just the average power-plant pollutant emissions.
Indeed, one of the things that surprised researchers was “the magnitude of the public-health burden” imposed by data centers, he said. It could also be understated, he said. SFPD 'triage center' opens in leery,' 'skittish' SoMa While some are concerned about the SFPD's role at the new site, Code Tenderloin staff offering resources there said so far police have been hands off
The worst hit would be Mason County, West Virginia. On a per-household basis, the health impact of AI would be an estimated $986 there in 2030, the equivalent of more than seven months of electricity bills, according to the report. The median income in Mason County is 71% of the national figure. Before working on the study, the researchers thought that the air pollution linked to data centers would be limited to the counties where the facilities or the power plants that provided their electricity were located, Ren said. They figured that people who lived far away from them wouldn’t be affected, he said.Because of that dispersion, places can be hit with AI-related health costs even if they don’t see any of the economic benefits, the researchers noted.
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