Some Amazon engineers attended a Seattle City Council hearing on Wednesday to express support for new local regulations to control the construction of large-scale artificial intelligence data centers, pointing out that while such data centers are being built on a large scale, the company is laying off employees on a large scale.
Patrick Schlosser, a software engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS), said at the hearing: "Amazon is reportedly spending $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, most of which will be in data centers and artificial intelligence. Microsoft is spending $190 billion. Meanwhile, executives at my company have laid off 30,000 employees in the past eight months. This shows that big technology companies are eager to build as much computing power as possible."
The Seattle City Council’s Land Use and Sustainability Committee voted on Wednesday to suspend approval of new large-scale AI data center projects for a year to give the city time to regulate these projects. The proposal comes after four developers proposed to a local utility company to build five large data centers in Seattle. Two of the developers later withdrew their proposals amid public outcry.
Seattle joins a growing list of cities and counties trying to limit the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence data centers. According to the American Association of State Legislatures, 14 states are considering legislation that would impose moratoriums or bans on new data center construction. A report from Data Center Watch found that at least $156 billion in data center projects will be stalled or delayed in 2025 due to local opposition and legal action.
But at the same time, the tech industry's mega-corporations show no signs of slowing down.
Amazon, Microsoft, Google parent company Alphabet and Meta have committed approximately US$700 billion in capital expenditures this year, mainly for artificial intelligence infrastructure construction. At the same time, these tech giants and others in the industry are looking for ways to reduce costs, including through layoffs.
The 30,000 Amazon jobs Schlosser mentioned all took place after October last year, part of CEO Andy Jassy's move to streamline layers and cut bureaucracy so the company can operate like "the world's largest startup," as he calls it.
Schlosser has been with Amazon for nearly six years. He called on officials in Seattle to require data center developers to commit to using renewable energy to power their facilities and to stop using nondisclosure agreements or shell companies when announcing new projects.
"There has to be an industry that provides stable jobs to make these products, and every time there's a massive layoff, there has to be a new tax to fund city job programs," Schlosser said.
Schlosser and two other Amazon engineers who spoke at the hearing are members of Amazon Workers for Climate Justice. The group, made up of current and former Amazon employees, has repeatedly pressed the e-commerce company over its climate policies, employee treatment and other related issues.
In November, the group sent a letter to Amazon executives calling on the company to "take a more responsible approach to the rollout of artificial intelligence" and "face up to the costs of artificial intelligence and the safety and security measures we need."
