Letter to the Editor: Related Digital (AI) is Coming for Washtenaw County

by Joe Kazmierski

Since its inception, AI has been a mostly detached and seemingly consequence-free convenience in our lives. Other than premium plans, most AI companies don’t even charge you to use their services. So, excluding the possibility of losing your ability to read, write and interpret language as your own distinct individual—which, let’s be honest, who needs that stuff anyway?—there are basically no consequences to AI.

Until now. The age of consequence-free AI use is over—albeit a brief one at that, but of course technology must advance at speeds so fast that we get whiplash when we overshoot before we know what’s happened. Now, AI is coming to our doors to collect its dues, and it’s coming to collect those dues first, in a frequently overlooked population—rural America.

Related Digital, the company spearheading much of the race to build AI data centers in the US, has plans to build a seven billion dollar data center in Saline (a town just outside of Ann Arbor) that would consume as much power as the entire city of Detroit. Related Digital claims that the data center will provide “AI infrastructure” and create a few hundred jobs. Yet, unconvinced and fearful that the data center would raise local electricity bills, pollute the water systems and destroy the natural beauty of the town, the people of Saline pushed back and pressured the Township’s board of trustees to vote down the plans—which they did.

But Related Digital sued, and forced the small town’s board to overturn its ruling. Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done on a legal level to stop the data center, since state and federal regulations on data centers are basically nonexistent. This goes double since the project’s backers include the likes of Trump, OpenAI, DTE and Governor Whitmer. Yet still, Saline’s residents remain outspoken and diligent in their efforts, staging protests and making their voices heard.

The abundance and availability of technology may make us feel powerful, like we have the world at our fingertips, and, in a sense, maybe we do. But when the cost of that technology comes knocking—and it always will— when the scales tip in the other direction, when it’s your water that’s polluted, your town that’s affected, your backyard they’re bulldozing, we have to ask what’s it all for? When time and again we choose the alluring convenience of new technology while our real agency as individuals and communities slowly degrades to the benefit of massive corporations, when we’re left in the lurch, we have to ask, where is it all going? And, is it worth it?