Oakland University Is Building A Small AI Data Center And It Could Change How Students Do Research

The city of Rochester Hills, Michigan, is one step closer to implementing an AI data center in the city.

The location of the AI data center is projected to be on the campus of Oakland University, where school officials have voted to continue to pursue the project.

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The board of trustees voted recently to continue pursuing the concept of a data center, which Oakland University says would only use 2% of the power used by the facility and would only occupy 2% of the land.

We are so used to giant AI data centers, but the one that’s being proposed for Oakland University would be much smaller and beneficial to the students, as Oakland University vice provost Amy Banes Berceli told Fox 2:

This project will provide students with high-performance computing clusters standard in today’s workforce, while enabling OU to meet the technical thresholds required to compete for federal research funding.

Although some of the universities are seeing the benefits of a potential AI data center, there are others who are very leery of opening that door

I think that they’re kind of popping up everywhere and it’s too much. I think that our water supply is going to be polluted even more. The noise pollution I've seen from videos is just constant. And honestly, I just don’t really want to see any in my community. -Stella Swartz of Rochester.

Even though the AI data center will be small in comparison, do you think it's a bad idea to consider another one of these, especially in Rochester?