OpenAI wants to win over data-center opponents by calling them ‘compute campuses’ and promising local benefits - Fortune
By Google News AI ·
OpenAI has a new name for the loud, dull, gray buildings Americans don’t really want as their next-door neighbors, and it’s calling them “compute campuses.”
Along with the rebrand comes a list of promises. On Thursday, the company published a National Community Compact, pledging to pay its own energy costs, disclose what its facilities do to the places around them, and give residents a say in how future sites it owns and operates are built.
The announcement came just two days after voters backed restrictions or rejected pro-development proposals in all but one of the 41 local data-center ballot measures across 10 states, according to Ballotpedia.
“Voters made their concerns about data centers clear in this week’s elections, and we need to listen and respond with concrete action,” OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane wrote on LinkedIn Thursday, while also acknowledging that data centers had become a proxy for concerns about affordability, corporate power, and communities losing control over their futures.
OpenAI is banking on this pitch working because, for the company, it’s about more than image. Its very growth depends on putting up enormous facilities in towns where people are asking, with growing suspicion, what’s in it for them and what they could lose.
The ChatGPT maker argues that “compute campuses” captures an economic role extending beyond the buildings themselves. In a policy blueprint released alongside the compact, it says specialized equipment and recurring hardware upgrades can generate sustained demand for skilled workers and local suppliers.
“The goal is for these campuses to support lasting local jobs and economic development beyond our facilities, with communities having a say in how they’re built,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Fortune…
Originally published by Google News AI
