This week we are continuing our AI & Environment series with an episode about a key piece of AI infrastructure: data centres. With us this week are Boxi Wu and Jenna Ruddock to explain how data centres are a gruesomely sharp double-edged sword.

They contribute to huge amounts of environmental degradation via local water and energy consumption, and impact the health of surrounding communities with incessant noise pollution. Data centres are also used as a political springboard for global leaders, where the expansion of AI infrastructure is seen as being synonymous with progress and economic growth.

Boxi and Jenna talk us through the various community concerns that come with data centre development, and the kind of pushback we’re seeing in the UK and the US right now.

Boxi Wu is a DPhil researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute and a Research Policy Consultant with the OECD’s AI Policy Observatory. Their research focuses on the politics of AI infrastructure within the context of increasing global inequality and the current climate crisis. Prior to returning to academia, Boxi worked in AI ethics, technology consulting and policy research. Most recently, they worked in AI Ethics & Safety at Google DeepMind where they specialised in the ethics of LLMs and led the responsible release of frontier AI models including the initially released Gemini models.

Jenna Ruddock is a researcher and advocate working at the intersections of law, technology, media, and environmental justice. Currently, she is policy counsel at Free Press, where she focuses on digital civil rights, surveillance, privacy, and media infrastructures. She has been a visiting fellow at the University of Amsterdam's critical infrastructure lab (criticalinfralab.net), a postdoctoral fellow with the Technology & Social Change project at the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center, and a senior researcher with the Tech, Law & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law. Jenna is also a documentary photographer and producer with a background in community media and factual streaming.

Further reading

• Governing Computational Infrastructure for Strong and Just AI Economies, co-authored by Boxi Wu
• Getting into Fights with Data Centres by Anne Pasek