Fossil fuel corporations are now allied with high tech firms bent on building massive data centers worldwide.  Following their model of constructing colossal centers to match talk of the multiple uses and tasks to which the data centers can be applied, the fledgling industry looks to fossil fuels to help double the energy supplied where they operate.  One research institute estimates that 37% of new gas plant production over the last two years has been built to meet data center energy needs.  The role of fossil fuels in the hyperscale of data center construction plans has led the U.S. to surpass China in gas plant expansion.

Data center construction and Artificial Intelligence has been marketed in  the U.S. by an array of media sources and hucksters led by Open AI’s Sam Altman.  In his testimony before a U.S. Congressional committee, Altman claimed A.I. techology will be able to address issues from climate change to curing cancer.  Rapid development of the technology in the 2020’s has brought dizzying consequences in Silicon Valley and related hubs. 

Visions of A.I. potential created by “prophets” like Altman grant it a quasi-religious status among A.I. technologues.  A refugee from that community, the former Silicon Valley engineer Karen Hao now specializes in AI as a journalist based in Hong Kong. She explains, “There are people at OpenAI, and there are people in the broader AI industry, that believe that they are ultimately building something akin to an AI God, and that when they achieve this kind of AI God, it is going to be cataclysmically transformative for civilization”.  Devoted to the pursuit of reaching AGI (AI on the level of human intelligence) these companies have found “ perfect cover for consolidating an extraordinary amount of unprecedented economic and political power, unprecedented land, energy, water and data resources and are undermining many pillars of democracy,” Hao observes. Hao now serves as a trustworthy authority reporting on the dangers of the AI development model pursued by Open AI, Microsoft, Google, Alphabet and Amazon.

In a nod to public concern for carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, Silicon Valley’s Alphabet and other firms argue  that the artificial intelligence promised by the centers can make oil and gas extraction cheaper and more efficient.  In another gesture to apppease,  these firms emphasize the potential to increase energy supplies that will prevent black outs and lower electricity costs eventually.   Even leftwing governments in Latin America have succumbed to the AI industry’s investment capital and compelling pitch of civilizational advance.  Brazil, Chile and Uruguay elected the most progressive governments in South America which entered into AI data center agreements after taking power.

In spite of local opposition and an enviable record of producing 98% of its energy needs with renewable sources, a Uruguay partnership with Google will soon complete construction of the largest data center in the country. When fully operational the center will consume energy that could power 200,000 Uruguayan homes.  The procedures to test and approve the project are considered incomplete and the studies of some areas sub-standard (from a May, 2026 Pulitzer Center for Journalism article).

The “bigger is better” bias behind the current data center planning is countered by Karen Hao’s wisdom based on her years of investigative reporting.  She notes that today’s dominant AI systems are shaped by a particular model of innovation—one driven by scale, capital concentration, and resource intensity. An alternative approach is applying AI to focus on “specific, automated solutions to societal problems”. In short, Hao proposes investing more in task-specific AI systems.She cites the example of  Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold which developed a system to predict protein folding that won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2024.