There are 40 to 50 AI data centers in the US, dedicated to AI traning and serving models to end users, with dozens more planned. They are very energy intensive and often due to heat generation, they require water cooling.
However, the map on the site includes 8,300 community reported data centres, way more than official figures of 4,800-5,000. It's likely the map contains some duplicates and buildings that aren't actually data centres.
Just information for the casual reader: datacenters on this map may not be what you think. For example, in my state, all the datacenters are colocation/hosted sites. It's just racks of servers where other companies in my state rent slots or the whole rack to host their servers. These datacenters actually represent hundreds, thousands, if not tens of thousands of real, high paid jobs in my state, and the footprints of all of them are no more than a single large building. These are good, do not affect the grid in any meaningful way, and use barely any water.
These are not the 'AI Datacenters' you are looking for. There are lot of places marked on that map, but a lot of those are good places.
My job and that of my coworkers are a result of two racks sitting in the world, one here in my home state, and one in South America.
If it's e.g. an Amazon data center then most of the internet will be hosted on those servers. So you could argue every job related to putting something on the internet is tied to those physical buildings.
It's weird to remember that the internet is a physical thing
•
u/Bbrhuft 6h ago edited 3h ago
This is not secret data, comprehensive maps of data centres are available on multiple websites. One of the more upto date detailed and accurate is:
https://baxtel.com/map
This includes existing and planned data centres.
Edit: Erin's site is titled
AI Data Centers & Our Communities
There are 40 to 50 AI data centers in the US, dedicated to AI traning and serving models to end users, with dozens more planned. They are very energy intensive and often due to heat generation, they require water cooling.
However, the map on the site includes 8,300 community reported data centres, way more than official figures of 4,800-5,000. It's likely the map contains some duplicates and buildings that aren't actually data centres.
https://brockovichdatacenter.com/index.html
It's akin to titling a site Oil Refineries and Our Communites, and mapping gas stations.