#43 Society and Technology

Cloud computing infrastructures have become even more critical with the rise of artificial intelligence. Today we recognize that these systems are in fact massive energy machines with direct and indirect environmental impacts. Finland is one of the first countries to address these issues with proactive solutions. Projects in the cities of Hamina and Espoo stand out as models worth emulating. In brief, the core objective of these initiatives is to utilize the “waste heat” generated during data center cooling to heat cities, through partnerships with major technology firms.

Google’s data center in Hamina is housed in a building previously used as a paper mill. In 2024, Google invested one billion euros to expand and convert the facility into a full-scale data center. Simultaneously, it partnered with the local energy company Haminan Energia. The hot water produced by the facility’s cooling systems is now directly fed into the city’s district heating network.

Examining the technical details of this project, we find a 7.5 megawatt heat pump system has been installed. This facility aims to generate approximately 40 gigawatt-hours of heat annually, meeting 80 percent of Hamina’s total heating demand. Google provides this waste heat free of charge to Haminan Energia. As a result, around two thousand homes as well as schools and public buildings are heated using a low-carbon energy source. This method has significantly reduced the city’s dependence on fossil fuels and turned the data center’s waste into a valuable resource.

Another example is the partnership between Microsoft and energy giant Fortum. This project, which covers a much larger area, was designed as the world’s largest waste heat recovery initiative, centered on a new data center region in Espoo, Kirkkonummi and Vihti. When fully operational, the facilities will meet 40 percent of the heating needs of approximately 250,000 households in the region.

The total thermal capacity of the system can reach up to 350 megawatts. Fortum intends for this project alone to achieve nearly 3 percent of Finland’s overall carbon emissions reduction targets. The recovered waste heat is expected to reduce reliance on polluting fuels such as coal and peat. This transforms data centers from mere technology hubs into energy powerhouses for modern cities.

Finland’s success in this field rests fundamentally on its existing advanced district heating infrastructure. While in many countries heat from data centers is wasted by releasing it into the air or water, Finland channels this energy directly into homes through underground pipelines. This also provides a major advantage for tech giants: the energy cost of cooling data centers is optimized through these recycling systems.

Using hot water from data centers to heat homes demonstrates the tangible physical reality of the digital economy. The structures we call cloud infrastructures are in fact vast buildings composed of massive cables, heavy server racks and water pipes. The examples of Hamina and Espoo teach us that technology must be viewed not merely as a software issue but as a resource management challenge.

As the computational power required to train artificial intelligence models increases, so too will the amount of heat generated. Designing this increase not as an environmental disaster but as an energy source will be decisive in future urban planning. Finland’s model offers a concrete roadmap for other countries. Ultimately, the investments by Google and Microsoft in Finland are not merely about increasing capacity. These moves reveal the deep connection between data and energy and illustrate how technology companies are expanding their roles within industrial infrastructure. Data is no longer just the fuel of the economy—it is increasingly becoming the warmth of buildings and the lifeblood of cities.

When we hear the term artificial intelligence, the first image that comes to mind is often a digital box conversing with us on a screen. Yet this technology has far broader and more diverse impacts than it appears. One of its key domains is agricultural land. A study conducted at Ohio State University shows that the modern farmer has transformed into a technology operator making agricultural and economic decisions guided by data-driven artificial intelligence. This shift makes it increasingly clear that the ancient human tradition of farming, dating back thousands of years, may soon be fully handed over to algorithmic reasoning and autonomous machines.

The transition from hand plows to tractors mirrors the broader story of industrialization across nearly every sector—from printing to textiles, automotive to construction. Replacing human strength with mechanical power has long been completed in most fields. As long as humans retain control over production and use machines merely as accelerators, this transformation delivers remarkable gains in efficiency. However, recent developments in agriculture reveal that this advancement is no longer solely about speed. Today, sensors buried in the soil and spectral cameras in the sky determine whether fruits are ripe or whether a plant needs water.

The extent to which agriculture has become mechanized and autonomous, subject to algorithmic decision support systems, appears as an undeniable success story in terms of efficiency. Yet this technological triumph carries the risk of severing humanity’s ancient bond with the soil. The intuitive, often inexpressible wisdom passed down from generation to generation, from master to apprentice, the ability to understand the soul of the land, now faces a serious threat from digitalization. Nevertheless, proponents of artificial intelligence offer a compelling argument: the vast datasets and millimeter-scale analytical capabilities provided by AI have the potential to close the gap left by lost intuition with a far more reliable data bridge, minimizing human error and nature’s unpredictability.

These systems have now evolved into precise application tools that calculate input costs down to the cent and prevent environmental damage. The era when entire fields were sprayed with chemicals to combat weeds is ending. It is being replaced by smart spraying technologies that detect and eliminate weeds in milliseconds upon sight. While this reduces chemical load and enables a more sustainable ecosystem, drawing definitive conclusions based solely on simulations remains difficult. Just as Google searches once revolutionized access to information, artificial intelligence is transforming this passive act of seeking knowledge into an active partnership for solutions.

Yet all this technological progress and increased efficiency has not yet fully resolved the questions in the minds of end consumers. As the integration of agriculture and artificial intelligence deepens, consumers grow more distant from products they believe are produced entirely by machine intelligence. Research shows that people still harbor natural skepticism and concern toward food produced with technology.

The broad and optimistic view of text-based AI models can be explained by the practical solutions and creative opportunities they offer. But when technological intervention extends to food production—the very foundation of life—a more critical and sensitive questioning begins for both producers and consumers. The autonomy deemed acceptable in digital outputs becomes deeply troubling when it implies the complete removal of human oversight from essential agricultural outputs, raising profound concerns about the quality and reliability of the food produced.

Another dimension of this concern is the separation of agriculture from the soil. Production models developed in laboratories, disconnected from natural ecosystems, also shake humanity’s bond with nature. The nutritional properties and biological implications of these products, severed from the land on which we live, stand as one of the most fundamental questions that artificial intelligence and biotechnology must answer.

Nvidia is executing one of its largest and most strategic investments ever in Israel. The land agreement between the company and the Israeli government for the construction of a massive R&D campus in Kiryat Tivon, near Haifa, has reached its final stage following approvals from the defense and foreign ministries. This campus, spanning approximately 160,000 square meters, is intended to house over 10,000 employees.

This investment further demonstrates that Nvidia’s relationship with Israel is no coincidence but grounded in a long-term, structural strategy. The company is not stopping at this campus; it has also begun construction of a massive server farm on a 30-hectare site in another region, which will house one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Thus, Nvidia is concentrating the most critical components of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure within Israeli geography.

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This process is not the first link in Nvidia’s presence in Israel. Its acquisition of Mellanox and the subsequent growth of R&D centers have now formed the company’s largest operation outside the United States. This context explains CEO Jensen Huang’s description of Israel as “the company’s second home after the United States.” Nvidia’s advanced talks to acquire the Israeli AI startup AI21 Labs for $2–3 billion further reinforce this strategic depth. The primary motivation here is not merely access to technology but to a highly skilled human talent pool.

Yet this picture is not limited to Nvidia alone. Intel’s multi-billion-dollar manufacturing investments over the years, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft’s R&D and cloud infrastructure in Israel, and Apple and Samsung’s supply and software ecosystems all point to a broader trend. With numerous alternative investment centers globally, the scale and persistence of investment in a country known for geopolitical risks and ongoing conflict is too striking to be explained solely by its “technology ecosystem.”

At this point, the issue transcends economic rationality and enters the realm of national security and geopolitics. Israel’s capabilities in cybersecurity, surveillance technologies and military artificial intelligence are subjects of global debate. Netanyahu’s recent remark that “the cell phones you use belong to Israel”takes on new meaning in light of these investments. The concentration of hardware, software and data infrastructure in specific geographic regions produces not only commercial but also strategic consequences.

On the other hand, boycott debates are becoming increasingly visible in this equation. This new wave of investment, stretching from Intel to Nvidia, leads to the perception that companies doing business with Israel are not merely economic actors but also indirect stakeholders in its political and military systems. From this perspective, Nvidia’s campus in Kiryat Tivon should be read not only as a technological investment but also as a symbol where global power relations, digital sovereignty and ethical responsibility intersect.