Underwater data centres gain traction as the AI industry looks to the ocean

[Rogue Di]

Law News has a piece on the growing interest in putting data centres under the sea, as the AI industry runs short of land, power and water on shore. The idea is not new, but the scale of AI demand is pushing it from experiment towards real deployment. With data centre power use expected to keep rising sharply, companies are looking at every option. The ocean offers cooling and space, at least in theory

The best known early test was Microsoft's Project Natick, which sank a sealed data centre off Orkney in 2018. When it was brought back up in 2020, the servers had a lower failure rate than a comparable one on land, which the team put down to the stable temperature and the lack of oxygen and people in the sealed unit. Microsoft did not roll it out commercially, but it proved the concept worked

China has gone further, with a commercial underwater data centre off Hainan and projects linked to offshore wind power. Using seawater for cooling cuts the energy and fresh water needed compared with traditional data centres. Placing them close to coastal cities also means lower latency for large populations

There are plenty of concerns though. Warm water released from the units could affect local marine life, and nobody fully knows the long term impact of large clusters on the seabed. Maintenance is also much harder, since you cannot just walk in and swap a failed drive. And as the Law News angle suggests, there are open legal questions about permits, ownership of the seabed, environmental liability and which country's rules apply offshore

I find the idea fascinating but slightly unsettling. We have spent decades worrying about what we dump in the sea, and now we might fill it with servers. Would you support underwater data centres if they reduced pressure on land, power and water supplies? Or is this a problem we should not solve by moving it out of sight?

Underwater Data Centres Gain Traction as AI Industry Eyes the Ocean - Law Newswww.lawnews.co.uk