When Data Centers Come to Town

Our speakers will examine the booming AI infrastructure economy in relation to Michigan, with a focus on the rapid development of Data Centers within the state. We will begin with unpacking what Data Centers are, why they're coming to Michigan, and their social and environmental ramifications. We will analyze Michigan's recently passed tax exemption bills in comparison to other states like Virginia that house a large number of Data Centers, and scrutinize the promise of job creation and clean energy consumption coded into these bills. Finally, we will look at some of the newly proposed projects in Washtenaw County, the ways in which they are already impacting local communities, and how these communities are responding to them.

Speakers:
Ira Anwar is a 5th year PhD candidate at the School of Information. Her dissertation focuses on the political formations of AI infrastructures, specifically the development of Data Centers as enabled by state institutions and public policy. Her research also examines local societal and environmental impacts of rapid Data Center development, with a focus on how state incentives are enabling big tech companies to appropriate public and natural resources, from water and land to electricity. Previously, Ira has worked on practices of algorithmic control of labor in the gig economy, with a focus on understanding how algorithmic mechanisms facilitate conditions for rising labor precarity. In her free time Ira loves to walk around Ann Arbor, and if lucky, the great lakes and the Upper Peninsula.

Nathan Kim is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan School of Information and a Graduate Research Associate at the Distributed AI Research Institute. s interests. His current writing focuses on the political economy of Silicon Valley, especially as it relates to the recent emboldening of the Valley's right-wing factions and its return towards defense technology. Though the conditions and processes for the reactionary right's rise has been in place for decades, their recent victories signal a shift away from the libertarian corporatism of the "Californian ideology" and towards an unabashed politics of domination, doing away with pretenses of democratic governance and egalitarianism.