Journalists Laís Martins and Pablo Jiménez Arandia talk to iMEdD about their investigations on the “big issue of our time: how the world is going to sustain the development of AI.”
Data centers are the physical part of the so-called “cloud” —the engines that keep ChatGPT, Amazon, Google and other tech giants processing, and storing data. As the demands of generative AI increase, Big Tech is scrambling to build more of these massive structures, often the size of football fields, all over the world. But how much energy do they need? How much water do they consume? Why are governments touting them as great investments?
With the support of the Pulitzer Center, investigative reporters Laís Martins and Pablo Jiménez Arandia, set out to answer those questions. What they uncovered, in separate investigations (for The Intercept Brasil and El País) across Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Spain, was an industry shrouded in secrecy, that actively set up roadblocks to prevent journalists and citizens from discovering data centers’ detrimental effects on the land and the communities that live there.
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