The Cloud Has Sound: The Unrelenting and Unprecedented Price of the Artificial Intelligence Boom
The heart of the AI economy sounds like the low-frequency hum of your neighbor’s central air conditioning unit, a plane flying overhead at high altitude, or a truck engine idling down the road.
But it feels like the vibrating, rhythmic pulse of a subwoofer from a party that never ends.
Yes, the cloud has sound, and some who live closest to the data centers that emit the noise have gotten up to their wits about trying to block it out.
Residents of three small towns last month filed lawsuits against the data centers specifically over noise.
The United States has more than 3,000 operational data centers, with more than 1,500 under development, according to the Pew Research Center. analysis. They have been the backbone of the information economy for decades and operate largely in the background of everyday life.
Box-like industrial facilities house thousands of servers and chips that process billions of operations daily and store vast amounts of data.
Memory chips generate heat and need giant industrial fans to keep them from melting. Many data centers also use diesel generators because the grid often cannot support such large power needs.
The demands of artificial intelligence, which require far greater amounts of computing power and cooling infrastructure, have led to an explosion in data center construction.
Today, nearly 40 percent of households are within five miles of at least one operating data center, Pew found, and more are getting closer.
The hum of these cooling systems, the hum of generators and the whine of fans can be heard and felt hundreds of feet and even miles away.
“The acoustic footprint is just an order of magnitude different,” said Les Blomberg, the nonprofit’s executive director Noise Pollution Clearinghouse.
Part of the noise consists of infrasound, ultra-low-frequency sound waves that fall below the threshold of human hearing.
Instead of audibly hearing these extremely low frequencies, people physically feel them as pressure fluctuations, much like the deep vibrations of a bass drum that shake your core at a concert, said Scott Hamilton, a member of the Acoustical Society of America and a consultant for data center projects.
This can make traditional noise meters and noise reduction solutions unsuitable for modern needs.
Some residents living near infrasound often report chronic sleep deprivation and insomnia, headaches, inner ear pressure and anxiety.
Many times the law will not help.
Noise pollution is regulated at the local level through a thicket of zoning ordinances that were originally written to address loud block parties, barking dogs, or construction noise, not the nonstop industrial hum of a data center.
There is no relief at the federal level, as the Reagan administration has defunded the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control. in the early 1980s.
While the regulations are in place, “there’s no one at the EPA to really enforce them,” said Richard Neitzel, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan.
“They set that office up as an example of regulatory overreach, like how dare the government tell me how loud my lawnmower can be,” he said.
Residents are now pushing to fill the regulatory loophole.
The three lawsuits argue that while data centers often meet basic zoning regulations, the constant hum and vibration cause significant impairment to property values and loss of quiet enjoyment for nearby homeowners.
The plaintiffs want damages and to force the companies to improve reliable warranties.
In Vineland, N.J., a group of homeowners filed suit in federal court, driven in part by fear of more noise.
“There’s a constant noise of machines running, most noticeable at night when they’re trying to sleep,” Stefanie Bartiromo, a nearby resident, said of the three server rooms already in operation, according to the lawsuit. “Sounds like a helicopter that never moves and sometimes a heavy truck running constantly.”
The lawsuit was filed against DataOne USA, which is adding to its Vineland campus. When completed, DataOne will have a 2.6 million square foot complex requiring 300 megawatts of energy, enough to power a medium-sized city.
DataOne said it has already taken steps to reduce noise and will continue to do so when the addition is completed.
“We remain committed to constructive dialogue and a long-term valued and responsible member of the community,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The company said it wants to add jobs and boost the local economy. The economic case for data centers has also been raised by other companies that have been sued over noise years after redeveloping former industrial sites in Dowagiac, Mich., and Lowell, Mass.
Dowagiac residents complained about a 30-megawatt data center in a building mostly used to store boats and RVs.
The center’s owner, Alliance Cloud Services, recently purchased an additional 50 acres of wooded land as it plans to expand its energy-use capacity to 300 megawatts from 30 megawatts. Some of that land would act as a natural buffer, the company said.
In the fight against noise, the industry is moving towards liquid cooling. Instead of using loud fans to push air, servers are immersed in special non-conductive liquids or have liquid-cooled “cold plates” sitting on heat-generating processors.
This can reduce data center noise by more than 50 percent, but is much more expensive to install.
Dowagiac, a city of 5,700, had a general noise ordinance like many municipalities, but recently set decibel limits for ambient noise in residential, commercial and industrial zones.
Most communities set their standards using an A-weighted decibel scale designed to mimic human hearing in quiet environments and greatly reduce or ignore low-frequency sounds emitted from data centers, experts said.
In contrast, the C-weighted scale is designed to capture low-frequency noise.
This difference is especially important when measuring data center noise, which is dominated by low-frequency hums from massive cooling fans and equipment, said Dr. Neitzel.
As a result, Mr. Blomberg said, a noise source that clearly dominates the listener’s ear may not register as a problem on a standard decibel meter.
The CEO of Hyperscale Data, Alliance’s parent company, said its operation is within the city’s allowable decibel limits and that it will use systems that minimize energy use.
Executive Director William B. Horne said he will attend the City Council meeting to meet with residents and stressed his commitment to being a trusted partner.
“We would offer to buy those properties at market value and provide a subsidy to cover the cost of moving,” he said of residents who live adjacent to the data center.
The crux of the problem, said Dr. Neitzel, is that for many traditional community noise sources—such as airports and highways—noise levels tend to disappear or decrease at night.
Not so with data centers.
“Now you have the same sound level when you’re trying to sleep, which is a much more sensitive time for the body to recover,” he said. “Noise is as serious a danger as air pollution or water pollution.”
In Lowell, Mass., Diana Streete said the noise “regularly interferes with my family’s ability to sleep, rest, relax and comfortably enjoy our home.”
“My children’s rooms face the entrance area where there are trucks and equipment running, which makes the noise particularly disruptive,” she said.
Lowell, a city of 115,000, was founded as a textile town in the 19th century, but its mills closed in the early 20th century. The site of today’s data center was once the Lowell Bleachery and Dye Works and then the Prince Spaghetti Factory for six decades.
The 350,000-square-foot data center is adjacent to homes and recreational facilities, including a park and baseball field.
its owner, Markleysaid the complex supports the digital infrastructure of public safety agencies, universities, local hospitals and other regional institutions.
It is a co-location data center, a shared facility where several companies rent space to house their computing equipment. This differs from hyperscale data centers that are built to serve the needs of global technology companies.
Spokesman Markley said the generators were tested weekly and that the sound was within established limits.
Mr Hamilton said there was a wide spectrum of sound and an equally wide spectrum of how people process that sound. The current standards are made for the average person, he said.
“But you work in this area long enough and eventually you will encounter or experience an ultra-sensitive person,” Mr Hamilton said. “These people legitimately feel the sound and the vibration and the intensity that the average human being says, ‘That’s not a problem. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and they’re tortured by it.”
What is a good neighbor? Mr Hamilton said it was a fundamental question he tackled in his work.
“There is no world where no operation makes any sound,” he said. “We experience sounds all day, every day, but they are reasonable, acceptable, and then unacceptable.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.