Amazon workers are asking Seattle to put the brakes on the new data center

On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council will vote on whether to impose a one-year moratorium on new permits – just two months after several companies proposed to build five large facilities in the city. Among the biggest supporters of the shutdown are current workers from the city’s largest giant, Amazon, who joined others to testify in support of the policy last week.

The museum has launched an exhibition pass through and the world concerns about water usage, local electricity prices, and noise. In Seattle and surrounding King County, the issue is reaching its peak. If the city council votes in favor of the moratorium on June 9, any major Seattle proposals will be tabled for a year, during which they can consider legislation to symbolically (and possibly literally) restore power.

At two city council meetings, people spoke loudly in favor of the move — including engineers, software developers, and others in the industry. “In my work, I see the results of the construction of AI worth all the cost,” said Liesl Wigand, Amazon’s chief engineer, at a meeting of the Seattle Land Use and Sustainability committee last Wednesday. “The biggest problem is believing that AI should be the way we solve everything, and ignore the things that cost money. This trend is everywhere in technology.”

Wigand is a member of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group of current and former employees dedicated to climate issues. Last year, more than 1,000 Amazon employees signed up an open letter accusing Amazon of “abandoning its climate goals in favor of AI,” calling on the company to power all of its data centers with 100 percent renewable, locally renewable energy. Sarah Tracy, a former Amazon software engineer who is also a member of the group, says she has been waiting for an opportunity as a moderator to speak.

A new data center in Seattle was requested by four companies, whose names are about to be closed, and would have a maximum demand of 369 megawatts – about a third of the electricity Seattle uses every day – and make it use 10 times more electricity than the 30 existing facilities in the city. Seattle Times.

After saying he’s proud to live in a city that legally protects employees from retaliation for political speech, Wigand pushed lawmakers to take action to “establish” a data center in Seattle. He said he and technical staff have seen examples of well-built data centers, with safeguards such as climate control and AI security committees. But Seattle still doesn’t have a tech industry of those kinds. “Let’s not let Big Tech burn Seattle to win the AI ​​race,” Wigand said.

The expected emergency stop comes in the form of a to solve calling for more research on the impact of data centers on urban infrastructure, commodity prices, water and land use, employment, and public health. But for some, the plan doesn’t go far enough. One problem, according to local newsIt is said that if all the papers are sent to the new data center in Seattle before the voting, then the construction can go ahead.

Patrick Schloesser, a developer at Amazon, asked the committee to consider ordering developers not to hide behind NDA and shell companies, which would make it impossible to know who is behind the data centers. He said that every producer must supply 100 percent of the energy to the local grid and pay a tax every time they complete a project. He also called for safety committees led by workers who tell the city, “that if any AI starts on your behalf and poses a threat to the city, the city can prepare and intervene if necessary.”

At a meeting of the Parks and City Light committee, Darius Irani, a developer at Amazon, asked companies to provide more energy and save energy and report to the public on the use of water and electricity. “We can’t rely on these companies to manage themselves – Seattle needs to make a point that the way new data centers are built now brings us closer to the future we want,” he said.

Many other people also spoke out in favor of a freeze, including electronics engineers and technology workers at other companies, some of whom said they had lost their jobs because of AI. One speaker mentioned Seattle’s housing crisis and the expected increase starting in 2024 in the number of local homeless people. Others brought up data center-related increases in their electricity bills in recent years, talked about the number of single-family homes that data centers in Seattle could take out, and played audio recordings of data centers that sounded far away.

Some comments echo the strong criticism of the AI ​​industry. Another speaker, who said he worked on AI at the start-up, said data centers are a huge benefit to organizations and that when it comes to AI, “I don’t think it’s going to help us much.” One speaker said AI “doesn’t need megawatts — it needs mega-resolution.” (This elicited a “Dang!” from the audience.)

Others expressed disappointment. “If you had asked me a year ago if I would support the shutdown of the data center, I would have said no,” said one speaker. “At that time, the technology companies were telling us that they were planning to provide them with additional energy – battery storage, and responsive energy that would help the sustainability of the grid. They said they would use closed-loop cooling systems that would reduce water use and increase the temperature of nearby buildings. But what did they do? No.”

A former Amazon software engineer who spent years in Seattle — and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation — said. Seaside that companies have “barrels” in front” and data center buildout without input from the employees or communities they are building in.

“We have a real opportunity here to take a break, to pause, to say ‘OK, if this is the technology we’re going to have, how do we make technology and technology work for the benefit of people instead of just consolidating wealth into the hands of billions of people?’ “The former employee said.

And despite the size of the opposition, the suspended supporters will not be powerless. Private data plans have been to be terminated or low after local protests, and plans to ban it in all districts. Just the New York legislature voted for a one-year ban on the new big data center, which will now go to the governor’s desk.

Schloesser cited reports in his testimony that Amazon is spending $200 billion on the economy this year, and Microsoft is spending $190 billion, most of which has been devoted to AI and data centers. At the same time, he said, Amazon has laid off 30,000 workers from its offices in the last eight months.

“What that tells me is that Big Tech wants to make as many computers as possible, as fast as possible,” Schloesser said. “This frustration makes our city stronger.”