Officials from OpenAI are confident that by 2031, they will be operating a massive data center complex powered by natural gas turbines in Pike County and that eventually more than 10,000 construction employees will be working there each day.
The confidence comes in the face of growing backlash against data centers, rising fears about artificial intelligence and uncertaintly that CEOs, governments leaders and lawmakers can contain a technology that is increasingly considered smarter than humans.
OpenAI leaders met Sept. 28 with educators, labor unions, local and city leaders in Piketon to update the community on its progress. On Sept. 29, they met with The Dispatch to relay what they've heard from the public and what they envision as one of the world's
most powerful and influential companies.
"I think that there is a cautious optimism about this project. I think they've felt that they've had other projects that have come and not necessarily materialized," Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, said of the reaction in Pike County in southern Ohio.
Officials said natural gas turbines will be needed to power the systems. No nuclear power is planned for the project.
"We want to have this project done in the next five years. That's why we need to have shovels in the ground by early next year," he said.
Of the 35,000 jobs initially needed to build the campus, about 2,500 of them will be long-term or permanent. At its height, roughly 10,000 to 12,000 workers a day will be working in the county, drawn from communities around the state and region.
The result will drive computing capacity for AI, more of which is increasingly needed, company officials said.
"Ohio's going to have more (computer processing capability) that any other state in the country, potentially more than any other place in the world," Lehane said.
OpenAI's ChatGPT and others are regularly use by more than a billion people, one-in-six worldwide, Lehane said.
OpenAI announced in August that they would partner with the Japanese-owed SB Energy, California-based Nvidia and U.S. Department of Energy to create 35,000 construction jobs in a six-year buildout of the Pike County data center campus that broke ground earlier this year.
The San Francisco-based company has agreed to secure up to 10 gigawatts of information technology electrical power at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus about 70 miles south of Columbus. SB Energy will build, own, and operate the data center under a 20-year lease with OpenAI.
"What people seem to really be focused on is how do we take advantage of the 35,000 construction jobs, and 2,500 permanent jobs," Lehane said. "How can we be sure that these come back to our community in a real, material and meaningful way?"
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: OpenAI's Ohio mega data center complex to start construction next year
