What I Tell My Children about 9/11

Data centers remain one of the most contentious political topics of the year, and much of the policy discussion around their construction has shifted from attracting them to managing their growth. Part of that shift is because policymakers and industry leaders are coming to better understand how data centers affect economies, electrical systems and natural resources. However, they are also responding to growing public concern about whether communities benefit from having them nearby.

To someone skeptical about the cost and impact of data centers, assurances about fair electricity costs, transparency regarding resource management and more tax revenue might sound like good ideas. But those guardrails are unlikely to persuade someone who sees no value in the services those facilities provide. If a company proposed building a factory in my community that kicked me in the shins every morning, why would I care if they offered to pay for my shin guards?

Data centers do not produce a tangible product. It’s therefore easy to overlook what they do provide, despite how much we already rely on their services.

On an ordinary day, someone might wake up and check the weather, read emails, pay bills and monitor traffic before heading to work. By then, he or she has probably already depended on several distant computer systems, all of which depend on the “cloud” — which depends on physical equipment stored and operating in a data center.

Some who believe data center growth must be slowed might dismiss these examples as mere modern conveniences. However, the same basic infrastructure also supports services for which speed, security and reliability are more consequential, such as when a physician needs immediate access to a patient’s medical history. Banks use it to process payments and detect fraud, and logistics companies depend on it to track shipments, manage inventories and coordinate routes. It also keeps government records accessible and supports the communication systems used by emergency responders.

The precise function varies by facility, but data centers generally provide some combination of storage, processing power and network connectivity. For many businesses and institutions, maintaining that scale and reliability independently would be prohibitively expensive or impractical.

The digital economy is nothing new, and data centers supported its growth for decades before the facilities became a point of political contention. Google, for example, traces its data center investment in Georgia all the way back to 2003. What changed is the scale of demand.

Businesses and consumers were already generating and processing more data each year, but the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence has accelerated that growth. Training advanced AI models requires enormous computing capacity, and putting those models to work across millions of daily interactions further increases demand for processing power.

That explanation might not make data centers more appealing for someone already skeptical about the proliferation of AI. But AI is not limited to chatbots and generated memes. There are many uses of the technology that are less visible and far more consequential.

Take for example its applications in medicine. AI systems can help clinicians identify patterns in medical images, assist researchers in examining genetic and clinical data, and evaluate potential drug compounds much faster than traditional methods alone. In cancer research, these tools are being used to study tumors, improve detection and narrow the search for treatments worth further research and investment.

Agriculture offers another example. Farmers can use AI to analyze weather conditions, soil data and images of crops, helping them identify crop disease earlier, apply water and fertilizer more precisely and make better decisions about planting and harvesting.

These applications reflect a growing industrial reliance on services that require vast amounts of computing capacity. Questions persist about where data centers should be built, economic incentives and cost allocation, but there is no ignoring the fundamental need and demand for data centers. Simply restricting their construction would be a counterproductive and damaging prospect, whereas the challenge in reality for Georgia is to manage the industry’s growth responsibly.

In the coming weeks, the Foundation will take a closer look at data centers’ resource usage, specifically concerning water, electricity and land use.