Amazon employees attend city council meeting to demand limits on data centers

Two Amazon employees On Wednesday he publicly called for regulations on New data centerstelling elected officials in Seattle that uncontrolled development of hotly contested neural centers for artificial intelligence threatens the region’s environment, economy, and safety.

“Local governments, in collaboration with community stakeholders, should set the conditions for establishing data centers,” Liesl Wiegand, Amazon’s chief software engineer, said at a city hearing. “Let’s not let Big Tech burn Seattle down to win the AI ​​race.”

The comments by Wiegand and another Amazon software engineer, Patrick Schlosser, represent a major escalation in the protest movement across the United States against the rapid construction of the Internet. Data centers Over the past two years. While workers at several major technology companies, including Amazon, have complained about the negative impacts of data centers and the need for greater oversight, none of them are believed to have done so openly and explicitly before, according to labor organizers supporting the effort in Seattle.

Schlosser, who has worked at Amazon for nearly six years, said data centers must provide more renewable energy than they consume and provide energy storage to support the broader electricity grid. Schlosser also called for new taxes on tech companies and “labor-led safety commissions that report to the city” on any AI tools that “become a risk” to Seattle. Technology companies are scrambling to build data centers, giving Seattle the leverage to extract concessions from them, Schlosser said.

Both employees who spoke are members of a group of current and former workers known as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice Defended for a long time So that the company can better address the environmental impact of its business. Additional members of the group may speak at other city hearings where the one-year moratorium on data centers is expected to be discussed, including later on Wednesday. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice is also urging city officials to consult on data center rules with groups representing front-line workers such as labor unions.

Technology companies and real estate developers have announced plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build dozens of data centers across the United States to support the growing demand for AI chatbots and other generative AI technologies. Communities In almost every state They organized against the projects, citing concerns about them electricity and Water use, toxic waste, Harmful emissions, Noise, Tax exemptionsand whether artificial intelligence is equal technique Worth applying.

Amazon did not immediately comment in time for publication. Other tech giants, incl Microsoft and Googlehas recently tried to preempt backlash over its data center projects and get ahead of potential regulations across the country by strengthening commitments to transparency and environmental protection.

In Seattle, city officials are weighing the matter Stop for one year Regarding issuing permits for data centers to save time Establishing regulations for projects. According to Seattle, it currently has no rules for data centers City records. City He said It is home to some small data centers, but several companies have expressed interest in setting up “large-scale” development projects. Their arrival It can pay up Water and energy rates for other residents and increasing carbon emissions with the city currently having minimal authority to intervene.