ΟΡΙΝΙΟΝ > LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letter: AI boosters exaggerate benefits, ignore costs By LETTER TO THE EDITOR PUBLISHED: September 8, 2025 at 2:38 PM EDT Editor: It’s all over the news that wherever these big data centers turn up, electricity and water bills skyrocket for the communities. Yet Rep. Rob Bresnahan keeps parroting the claim that monster data center palaces will magically unleash affordability when all evidence is to the contrary. Rep. Bresnahan’s reply letter to me about data center projects regurgitated PA Senator Rosemary Brown’s talking point from the Archbald hearing falsely claiming monstrosity data centers are needed for photo backups and banking services. But the tech industry openly admits it’s the AI that requires huge data center campuses. The world’s banks have used computers for decades without huge “clusters”. Backups to the cloud take minuscule processing compared to what’s needed for Large Language Model type AI companions that flatter users or for chatbots that conjure up fake citation footnotes. Bresnahan is overpromising jobs at data centers because by now everyone knows data centers don’t need lots of people. Besides, AI technology is being marketed to CEOs as a way to eliminate the need for humans! They’re promising an “AI jobs apocalypse” to employers looking to downsize payrolls. Either AI makes jobs or eliminates jobs, you can’t have it both ways. Bresnahan bragged about a government joint venture with Blackstone. But Blackstone is despised for their business practices in real estate and rentals. Why would we welcome that boondoggle? Bresnahan seems to think I would like government rushing through environmental rules because politicians seem to think “environment” is just a political buzzword when what this means to me is the surroundings where I live and not wanting my home enveloped by unbearable noise and toxic fumes of data centers. AI booster politicians invested in tech companies think we’re not tech savvy here in NEPA and won’t know what’s up. But I’m not fooled. Chloe Humbert, Scranton
The tech companies themselves say that monster data centers are for AI chatbot stuff.
Chatbots like Mechahitlerbot. It’s NOT for your banking or your online shopping or backing up to the cloud, it’s for the LLM chatbots and their quasi-religious techno-rapture “singularity” searching for god or immortality or something. And politicians should know better than to try so embarrassingly to pull a fast one. Donald Trump’s so-called “monster palaces of genius” are not going to magically fix a bad jobs report, not now, and not a year from now either. We all know these data centers don’t need a lot of humans, and we know that these tech tycoons have sold this technology as a way for companies to eliminate jobs. These companies wanted, and were willing to pay good money for, a so-called “AI Jobs Apocalypse” – so these politicians can’t have it both ways. And anyone trying to sell it to the public as good for us is just not being honest.
