Amazon employees show up at city council meeting to demand limits on data centers

Two Amazon employees publicly called for regulation of new data centers on Wednesday, telling Seattle lawmakers that uncontrolled development of the highly controversial AI nerve centers threatens the region's environment, economy and security.

“Local governments, in collaboration with community stakeholders, should set the conditions for building data centers,” Liesl Wigand, Amazon's senior software engineer, said at a municipal hearing. “Let’s not let Big Tech burn down Seattle to win the AI ​​race.”

The comments from Wigand and another Amazon software engineer, Patrick Schloesser, mark a significant escalation of the protest movement in the United States against the rapid construction of data centers over the past two years. While workers at several major tech companies, including Amazon, have complained about the negative effects of data centers and the need for greater oversight, none appear to have done so publicly and explicitly before, according to union organizers supporting the effort in Seattle.

Schloesser, who has worked at Amazon for nearly six years, said data centers should provide more renewable energy than they consume and provide energy storage to support the broader power grid. Schloesser also called for new taxes on tech companies and “worker-led safety committees that report to the city” on any AI tools that “become a risk” to Seattle. Tech companies are desperate to build data centers, which gives Seattle leverage to extract concessions from them, Schloesser said.

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The two employees who spoke out are members of a collective of current and former workers known as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, which has long advocated for the company to better address the environmental impact of its operations. Other members of the group could speak at hearings in other cities where a one-year pause order on data centers is expected to be debated, including later Wednesday. Amazon Workers for Climate Justice is also urging city officials to consult on data center rules with groups representing frontline workers, such as unions.

Tech companies and real estate developers have announced plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build dozens of data centers across the United States to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence chatbots and other generative AI technologies. Communities in nearly every state have organized against the projects, citing concerns about electricity and water consumption, toxic waste, harmful emissions, noise, tax breaks and whether AI is even a technology worth developing.

Amazon did not immediately comment in time for publication. Other tech giants, including Microsoft and Google, have recently tried to preempt backlash over their data center projects and get ahead of potential regulations nationwide by strengthening their commitments to transparency and environmental protections.

In Seattle, city officials are considering a one-year pause in issuing permits for data centers to allow time to establish regulations on the projects. Seattle currently has no rules specific to data centers, according to city records. The city said it hosts a few small data centers, but several companies have expressed interest in setting up "large-scale" developments. Their arrival could drive up water and electricity prices for other residents and increase carbon emissions, with the city currently having minimal authority to intervene.

The Amazon employees were among about 30 members of the public, some describing themselves as laid-off tech workers, who spoke Wednesday during a comment period at a town meeting of the Land Use and Sustainability Committee, a five-member panel that later voted in favor of the proposed data center moratorium. Most speakers were in favor of this measure. Amazon workers did not explicitly voice support for the pause, but instead explained what they believed to be the benefit of establishing broader rules for the industry.

Workers at several large tech companies have become frustrated with their employers' focus on developing powerful AI capabilities. Last year, more than 1,000 Amazon employees anonymously signed an open letter warning of the harm caused by the company's “justified lightning-fast, all-costs approach” to AI development. Microsoft employees have also long expressed concerns about the development of AI in oil and gas production.

Recently, Meta employees filed a petition against the deployment of tracking software on their laptops to train AI systems, and the company subsequently allowed more exemptions to the initiative. Meta workers have also been frustrated by the use of mass layoffs to free up money for AI projects. In the United Kingdom, Google employees formed a union this year largely because they opposed the company's AI systems being outsourced for what they see as military uses. But organizers at Amazon Employees for Climate Justice don't believe workers at any of these companies have ever advocated for data center regulations by name.

Speaking to WIRED, a former Amazon executive who lives in Seattle wondered why anyone would want to locate a data center in an urban area, given that emerging technologies make it possible to build facilities further from population centers. He questioned the need for regulations that could slow the industry's progress, but expressed support for workers' rights to speak freely without retaliation from Amazon.

This is a developing story. Please check again for updates.