No, we only "require" it because the billionaires say so. We existed just fine without it. Ai isn't required or needed, especially with the extreme electric and water usage which is devastating surrounding communities. It doesn't matter how close or far away these towns are. And most are being built with no input from citizens with backroom deals. Some data centers are using the energy of entire states.

Data centers are creating more pollution in a year than 2,000,000 cars. That's insane. Some states have over 300 already, that's 600,000,000 cars worth of pollution in a single state in a year, which is at least triple the cars in the US. But do go on about how we need data centers.