I worked for IBM and maintained servers, but I’m currently unemployed. You might think I would welcome the data center proposed for Hermantown. I do not.
A modern data center requires very few people on-site. The servers are managed remotely, including powering off and on. I ran servers in Chicago; I only saw them once. If a processor fails, a robot replaces it. If a hard drive fails, a robot replaces it. It’s only when a robot fails, or a whole new server or network is needed, that human engineers are needed on-site. The software runs on another server while the engineers travel from wherever they live. This is why data centers result in few local technology jobs.
At the Hermantown City Council meeting where rezoning was considered, we were told the proposed project would result in “high hundreds” of construction jobs, mostly union. That would be great, but AI is in an investment bubble; even Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have admitted it. Nvidia, which makes the special processors used for AI, is now worth more than every big pharmaceutical company added together. OpenAI needs hundreds of billions of dollars in the next year but says it won’t make a profit before 2029.
When this bubble bursts, hyperscale data-center projects are expected to stop dead, with the construction jobs vanishing. Hermantown could get left with a mostly empty industrial lot with an abandoned building on it.
Don’t make taxpayers pay for infrastructure just for a data center. Don’t assume you’ll get tax revenue back after the bubble bursts.
We’re told Hermantown sees demand for 30,000- to 50,000-square-foot business-development areas. Why not use the rezoned space for that rather than betting on a single AI business?
Mathew Murphy
Duluth
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