The Cloud Next Door (Ngata et al.) is a short and relatively accessible paper (especially by academic standards) authored by an MIT undergraduate, examining the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of data centres on local communities.
Most discourse on data centres focuses on global or systemic effects: energy consumption, water use, and emissions. Far less attention is paid to what happens at the community level where these facilities are physically built. Ngata et al. address this gap through a mixed-methods study structured around four “local impact dimensions”: environmental impacts, social strain, economic impacts, and infrastructural strain.
A recurring concern across communities is that while data centre construction may bring short-term jobs, long-term employment gains are minimal due to the low staffing requirements of modern facilities. Any economic benefits are often perceived as flowing back to the tech sector and large corporations, rather than being redistributed locally.
As a late-breaking paper, the findings remain preliminary. Rather than deep causal claims, the authors surface a wide range of stakeholder attitudes and levels of awareness, and explicitly position this work as a foundation for broader engagement with additional stakeholder groups.
As AI infrastructure continues to scale, it will be worth observing whether these local consequences become more visible and louder in broader discussions about AI’s societal impact.
Brian Grellmann 