Business
Big Subsidies for Google, Limited Water for Locals: The Dilemma of AI in India
VISAKHAPATNAM, India—When Google arrived last year in this sleepy coastal Indian city, the government rolled out the welcome mat, offering billions of dollars’ worth of incentives for the U.S. company to build data centers for artificial intelligence.
Some residents had never heard of AI, much less Gemini and ChatGPT.
What they do know is that Visakhapatnam doesn’t have much water, which is typically needed in large volumes to cool data-center servers. Some fear their community will be hollowed out entirely, with many residents already pushed from land they have farmed for decades for the $15 billion project.
“How can we be happy about Google coming?” said 42-year-old Pyla Kondamma, who is giving up farming, although she concedes she is getting around $83,000 in compensation from the government. “We’ll all be scattered. It feels very sad.”
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