When communities in Chile found out that three data centers were planned for their backyards, they launched a campaign to educate the public about the potential impact of these giant construction projects. As AI infrastructure accelerates around the world, we are increasingly seeing citizens push back, asking their elected officials to slow down and prioritize community needs.
I spoke with Pulitzer Center AI Accountability Fellow Pablo Jiménez Arandia about his project The Backyard of AI, where they investigated hyper-scale data center development in Chile, Spain, and Mexico. “One of the major challenges in investigating the physical infrastructure surrounding the artificial intelligence boom is the lack of transparency,” Jiménez said.
The Backyard of AI was a collaboration between Jiménez, grantee Muriel Alarcón, and journalist Daniela Dib. In each location, they discovered distinct responses from civilians and varying transparency laws to support the pushback.
“Something interesting we observed in Chile is how local communities have, in many cases, become experts on how this industry operates, because they have done the painstaking work of reviewing the hundreds or thousands of pages that projects of this type entail,” Jiménez said. “The full environmental impacts of data centers have yet to be seen”, he added.
Data centers will be a central focus of Pulitzer Center events at Climate Week NYC (September 20-27), where we will discuss how climate issues are shaping decisions about infrastructure, technology, energy, natural resources, and public policy. Jiménez’s reporting has also laid the foundation for new training modules for journalists on how to investigate data centers, as part of the Center’s AI Spotlight Series curriculum.
