OpenAI is quietly renaming data centers ‘compute campuses’

People dislike data centers. They’re loud, resource-hungry eyesores that are so deeply unpopular they have managed to accomplish the near-impossible in today’s polarized governmental landscape: genuine bipartisan opposition. But what concerning “compute campuses”? Those audio lovely, right?

OpenAI seems to be gambling that a quiescent rebrand could be all it takes to defuse the expanding governmental backlash that threatens to derail the infrastructure fueling the AI boom.

OpenAI debuted the new terminology on Monday in an announcement launching its new “Grid Protectors Program.” The initiative, starting alongside an upcoming location in Effingham County, Georgia, aims to location concerns concerning the strain its sprawling AI infrastructure places on local power grids, particularly during extreme climate and emergencies. It’s a acquainted data center problem. Yet in the approximately 900-word announcement, the term “data center” appeared fair twice, outnumbered by “compute campus.”

The undertaking addresses worries concerning power use and the potential of consumers being remaining to ft the invoice for the AI buildout. OpenAI promises to “pay the expenses we create” and “help communities keep the lights on.” Its two mentions of “data center” fortify the connection: One references US data center capability and power consumption, during the another immediately compares OpenAI’s new “compute facilities” alongside “data centers built equal a few years ago.” They’re “much different,” OpenAI says, alongside the new campuses allowing the business to be fairly vaguely “flexible in our power demand.”

The terminology appears to be new for OpenAI. A quick hunt of its website turned up no former uses of the term. The timing is noteworthy, too. On Monday, Axios reported that OpenAI was preparedness to rebrand data centers as “AI compute campuses” as part of a guideline and PR shove following Tuesday’s midterms, anticipating a additional antagonistic regulatory surroundings if Democrats create gains. Apparently, the rebrand couldn’t wait.

Critics, however, aren’t purchasing it. A new name does nothing to lessen data centers’ environmental footprint, comfort the burdens they location on local resources, or location the concerns of nearby residents. Activist groups who said to The Verge see the rebrand as a fairly transparent attempt to interrupt liberated from an increasingly toxic tag without meaningfully tackling what made it toxic to commencement with. It fits inside a broader lobbying shove by Big Tech to oppose souring community sentiment.

“OpenAI is plainly responding to the unpopularity of data centers,” stated Holly Elmore, originator and administrator director of PauseAI US, a grassroots collection campaigning to intermission AI development.

“Rebranding them ‘compute campuses’ may fool listeners formerly or twice but it’s not the name ‘data center’ that is unpopular — it’s the giant, polluting building projects that apparently threatened to rotate off people’s warmth in the winter,” Elmore told The Verge in an email, calling OpenAI’s power notice “woefully spirit deaf.”

“Communities that despise them volition not be fooled into thinking they have transformed into item else.”

Abre’ Conner, director of the NAACP’s Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, was likewise unimpressed. “This feels akin an bare resolution to an existing issue, which is that the data center infrastructure causes genuine harm,” she told The Verge. “Changing the name does not fix the issue and makes it appear akin people’s health and our surroundings are community relations problems not ecological and climate concerns.”

Conner asserted that OpenAI should concentration on changing its practices fairly than what it calls data centers. “At a period whenever companies could utilize their resources to create new models, create additional transparency, and dilatory the infrastructure development, their resolution is to fair alter their name.”

Elmore agreed, suggesting the data center rebrand was an attempt by OpenAI to keep up alongside its competitor Anthropic, but that it isn’t “spinning it nearly as well.” Earlier this year, Anthropic pledged to shield 100 percent of the upgrades needed to nexus its data centers to power grids, including those that would normally be passed on to consumers. The business has additionally promised to allocate billions of dollars in community projects developed alongside local leaders, defend local h2o supplies, and refrain from asking community officials to sign NDAs — a custom that has recently arrive under scrutiny. Anthropic stated those commitments use to the two leased and owned data centers. Leased accommodation currently create up most of its infrastructure, although its recent S-1 filing onward of its IPO indicates the business wants to aggressively build its own, too, alongside many relying on gas.

OpenAI did not react to The Verge’s petition for comment concerning its decision to alter nomenclature, its motivations for doing so, or whether doing so is an attempt to extend itself from the expanding disagreement surrounding data centers.