AI data centers have a human rights problem

AI infrastructure is the biggest construction boom in a generation, but what happens to workers at the far end of the supply chain?

[Source Image: Production Perig/Adobe Stock]

Every time you ask ChatGPT to draft an email, or prompt an AI assistant to help you decide which refrigerator to buy—somewhere, a data center hums to life to make it happen. These facilities, which can span the size of a small city, are the unglamorous physical infrastructure behind the AI revolution. They’re cavernous buildings packed with servers, cooled by industrial systems, drawing power at a scale that strains local electrical grids. What almost no one talks about is the human beings building them.

To construct a single data center, developers source millions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, lithium, and........

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