‘Fear of the unknown’ drives data center pushback, Nvidia exec says - Semafor

Nvidia’s head of sustainability pushed back against the groundswell of anti-AI sentiment that’s unfurled over the last few weeks, attributing the backlash partly to a “fear of the unknown.”

“A lot of us feel that around AI,” Josh Parker said at Semafor’s The Next 3 Billion event, calling those fears a “fundamental” human response. “How is it going to impact our lives in general? So listening to the questions and trying to understand and provide transparency and data about the sustainability results that we see, the actual impacts of data centers.”

The story “is actually a very good one, and water is a really good example of that,” he added.

Chip giant Nvidia has been one of the main beneficiaries of the data center boom, as demand for AI requires more high-powered chips to run increasingly complex models.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been an outspoken critic of calls from the frontier labs to slow the pace of AI over safety concerns.

Parker said the conversation around prioritizing both safety and sustainability wasn’t “inconsistent at all actually, because responsible deployment of AI is the common thread … at different times, different themes get more press and more attention than others.”