I build AI data centers. I want them to disappear from view.
Sean James, a distinguished engineer at Nvidia, discusses his career goal of making AI data centers less intrusive and more energy-efficient. He argues that these facilities should fade into the background of modern infrastructure, similar to electrical substations.
Why it matters
As AI infrastructure expands rapidly, the environmental and physical footprint of data centers has become a major point of public concern regarding energy and water usage.
Sean James works at Nvidia as a distinguished engineer. Sean James Sean James is a distinguished engineer at AI chipmaker Nvidia focused on powering data centers. James started his career as a submarine electrician in the Navy and previously spent 25 years building data centers at Microsoft. He makes the case that AI data centers "need to fade into the background" so they're visibly "unremarkable." This first-person essay was written by Sean James , a distinguished engineer in energy systems at Nvidia, where he works on the power and energy infrastructure needed to support AI data centers. He previously spent more than two decades at Microsoft designing and building data centers. Chances are you passed an electrical substation today that delivers power to thousands of homes at hundreds of thousands of volts. It was so unremarkable that you didn't even notice.
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