In a time of unprecedented technological progress, it is tempting to accept any new invention as inherently conducive to a greater quality of life.
Regardless of any negative repercussions, some would even lead you to believe that the advent of such technology is a preordained inevitability. Any resistance, many tech moguls and consumer enthusiasts argue, would be futile.
The latest craze — as evidenced by Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year, “slop” — is the ever-ubiquitous presence of artificial intelligence, or AI.
From bot-generated hit songs to deepfake political advertisements to hollow and regurgitated content (the slop) to chatbots like ChatGPT, AI is, at the moment, an inescapable part of modern life.
But this bombardment of AI did not come out of thin air. The technology requires immense computational power from resource-intensive data centers. This past week, the Hamilton County Commission heard a pitch from a developer for such a data center in the basement of the old county jail.