Plus: A new Amazon data center could become the US's most polluting power plant. Plus: both parties are turning against AI data centers ahead of the midterms. Teaching a computer to use human language requires an inhuman amount of data. An LLM can easily churn through a hundred thousand times more words than a person will experience in the process of mastering their mother tongue. This yawning divide between children and machines is called the data efficiency gap. It raises a tantalizing question for cognitive scientists and a challenge for the architects of AI models: how can children still outperform the most linguistically sophisticated machines ever built?

Cheap energy, abundant land, and proximity to Beijing have turned a city in Inner Mongolia into a crucial hub for data centers. Travel just two hours west of Beijing by train, and you'll find yourself surrounded by the rolling grasslands and ancient cinder cones of Inner Mongolia. This vast, arid land has long been China's capital of sheep farming and coal mining, but over the last few years, it has become the hottest place in the country to build an AI data center. In Ulanqab, a city in Inner Mongolia home to about 1.5 million people, nearly 100 data centers have been opened or begun construction since 2016. Chinese companies have pledged to build projects with a combined estimated capacity of 12.5 gigawatts in the city, and over 70 percent of the total commitments have been announced in just the last year, making it one of the fastest growing compute clusters in Asia, according to a research note published by Goldman Sachs last week.

Mashable Selects Look Up Say More Versus Creator Hub Switch Off Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Trending Now Safety Net In My Bag VidCon with Mashable Back to School All Series Amazon's new Texas AI data center will include massive amounts of air pollution Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. In 2019, Amazon signed the Climate Pledge, aiming to help Earth's environmental health. In 2026, Amazon aims to set a record for the most air pollution emitted by a single power plant.

Hiroo Ota (center left), CEO of Kioxia Holdings, and others unveil Kioxia's new 3D flash memory chip at its Kitakami plant in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, on Friday. Kioxia Holdings has started shipping samples of its next-generation flash memory chips to artificial-intelligence data center operators, seeking to gain ground in the lucrative business against rivals. The Tokyo-based chipmaker's latest high-density 3D flash memory chips aim to better meet AI data center needs with better efficiency and transmission speeds. The 332-layer 10th-generation chips pack more data into silicon and can store 59% more data compared with its previous flagship 8th-generation chip, the company said Friday. Production will take place at the company's second manufacturing facility at its Kitakami plant in Iwate Prefecture, which began operating in September last year.

They were testifying at a Seattle city council meeting. Five members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) previously testified at Seattle city council meetings about AI data centers . Now, three of them are apparently under investigation by the company. The AECJ has filed a civil rights complaint against the company on behalf of the three engineers, according to CNBC and GeekWire, accusing Amazon of violating a Seattle law that prohibits companies from discriminating against employees based on their political ideology, race, religion and age. The engineers spoke at Seattle city council hearings over whether to put a pause on AI data center buildouts.

The company has published a report about China-linked influence campaigns that used ChatGPT. OpenAI has published a report about ChatGPT users, who it says were likely based in China, that used the chatbot to plan a campaign designed to sway Americans' opinions about AI data centers. It divided the users into two clusters, the first of which it had designated the Data Center Bandwagon group. Accounts categorized in the group allegedly asked ChatGPT to generate English-language talking points and images, such as comic strips, which focus on how AI data centers drive up demand in electricity and how that leads to higher bills for consumers. The company says these users posed as Americans from a variety of backgrounds on social media, where they had posted the text and image output they got from ChatGPT.

How Much of Data-Center Activism Is Really AI Slop? Anti-AI sentiment is genuine, but its online expression looks stranger and stranger. Americans are wary of AI in general, and they are especially suspicious of the AI data centers that are popping up across the country like enormous mushrooms. A majority do not want a new data center built in their town. Across the country, community groups have organized to protest individual projects, and activists have successfully lobbied local and state politicians to place moratoriums on the facilities' construction.

Elizabeth Warren is a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street on April 17, 2025 in New York City. Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street on April 17, 2025 in New York City. Elizabeth Warren is a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. Americans are hanging on by their fingernails in an economy that funnels wealth to the ultra-rich and leaves crumbs for working people.

Most of the reports so far came from Texas. Erin Brockovich, the American environmental activist portrayed by Julia Roberts in the film named after her, has launched a new project that aims to give people a platform to speak up and voice concerns about AI data centers in their communities. The new Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting website centers on a map showing major operational AI data centers and facilities under construction in the US, along with projects reported by the community. Some of the reports could be for rumored or proposed projects, so not every dot on the map represents a data center that's already running. The website has received 2,716 reports so far, with the biggest chunk coming from Texas.

It filed a request with the FCC to deploy almost 52,000 satellites. Blue Origin has revealed its plans for an {@/data/467/1/1 orbital AI data center @/data/467/1/1} system in a new filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The company has asked the agency for permission to deploy 51,600 satellites, as reported by the and . Called Project Sunrise, the initiative aims to launch and operate a constellation of satellites that can deliver computing capacity for artificial intelligence uses. Project Sunrise's satellites will be placed in sun-synchronous orbits at altitudes between 311 and 1,118 miles.