• You don't need to live by a data center to hear the noise they emit.
• There's a plushie that emits the hum of a real-life data center in Virginia when it's hugged.
• The doll is part of a satirical art project called "Adopt a Data Center."

Plushies are getting weirder every day.

Bezzy is a gray handmade plushie with round eyes, a disarming smile, and a server-rack abdomen that plays the grating, mind-numbing hum of a data center when you squeeze it.

The sound is actually a recording made outside a real-life data center in Virginia.

"We actually got quite a few different recordings. It's a weird process to have to go through," Rajeev Basu, the artist behind the toy, told Business Insider. "I had to sit there listening to various screeching sounds on my computer, and we picked the one that would be most well-suited for the toy."

"It's terrifying. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone," he added.

Basu is the founder of New York-based creative studio, Basura. The studio worked alongside Big Data, a musical project by Alan Wilkis, to create a satirical art project called "Adopt a Data Center." The project highlights the realities of living near one.

"We're both inspired by this relationship between humans and machines," Basu said.

After OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, major players and new startups in the tech industry entered a global race to develop advanced AI systems. Companies like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Anthropic need massive new data centers to power their ambitious products.

As they began to sprout all over the country, Americans living near them began to bristle.

Critics say the benefits — like the potential for economic growth and new jobs — don't outweigh the risks. They worry data centers can worsen the environment, strain electrical grids, deplete water resources, and disrupt daily life. It's led to nationwide protests against them and to some towns and cities banning them altogether.

Americans living near data centers have also complained that the facilities can emit a constant hum akin to a loud drone or an airplane engine. Basu said data centers have become a regular topic in the news, but reading reports about the facilities is much different from having one in your backyard.

"You might not have a data center in your backyard right now, but with what some of these maps show with proposed plans, one could be in your backyard sooner than you think," Basu said.

Basura interviewed dozens of people across the US who live near data centers for the project, which took about six months to complete.

"Although our project is satirical, we wanted to make sure that everything was rooted in true research," Basu said.

In addition to the Bezzy dolls, the artists made stickers featuring phrases such as "Open your heart and your power grid" and "Please adopt me, I love GPU." A series of bumper stickers features tongue-in-cheek messages such as "Honk if you love computational infrastructure."

Basu said they wanted "Adopt a Data Center" to have an educational aspect, so the campaign's website has hyperlinks to research and reporting about AI and data centers.

"With a lot of my work over the years, it often uses human irreverence as a hook to invite people who might not necessarily be paying attention or have given it a second look to try and learn a bit more," Basu said.

Launched in September, the 20 limited-edition Bezzy dolls are already sold out.

Although the toy industry has struggled in recent years, millennials and zoomers have been softening the blow by driving up plushie sales. Market research company Circana said that people 18 and older accounted for over $1.5 billion in toy sales during the last three months of 2024.

"It's something that is so timely," Basu said. "It's quite a heavy and serious subject, so we're trying to find a way to help more folks learn about it."

• There are clear parallels between the AI boom and the dot-com bubble, tech investor Paul Wick says.
• But solid demand, strong earnings, and less mania make for a "healthier" backdrop, Wick said.
• Seligman's chief investor brushed off Michael Burry's worries but flagged some trends to watch.

The AI boom has shades of the dot-com bubble, but fears of an imminent crash and mass unemployment are overblown, a veteran tech investor says.

At the turn of this century, there was an explosion in dot-com startups being formed, and a huge infrastructure buildout with telecoms "aggressively" spending on wired and wireless networks, Paul Wick told Business Insider in an interview this week.

The chief investor of Seligman Investments — a group within Columbia Threadneedle Investments that manages over $40 billion of assets and comprises a hedge fund, a mutual fund, and a venture capital arm — said there were clear parallels between that period and the current boom in AI startups and data-center spending. He also noted that energy prices and interest rates jumped then as they've done this year.

But Wick noted there isn't the same IPO frenzy now, or the same "frenetic environment" where stocks soar fivefold or tenfold in a day. He also said that by late 2000, a slowdown in IT spending was being forecasted for 2001, whereas enterprise spending on AI remains strong and recent tech earnings have been robust.

Simply put, the situation seems "healthier" now than in 2000, he said.

Business Insider asked Wick about Michael Burry's warnings this year around AI. "The Big Short" investor has called out aggressive accounting, circular financing, hidden debt, and overinvestment in depreciating assets like microchips as reasons to be skeptical that the boom has legs.

Wick said that Burry, known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the mid-2000s housing bubble, has been "early or downright wrong on many other things."

Burry has previously defended his track record, citing his correct predictions and sharing charts showing the timing of his market calls.

As for concerns about Nvidia's efforts to grow the AI ecosystem by investing in data center developers and software companies, Wick emphasized that the chipmaker is "extraordinarily profitable."

He cast doubt on whether Nvidia should spend its spare cash only on buybacks, rather than bolstering its customers, especially as several of the industry's biggest players are working to develop their own AI chips to reduce their reliance on Nvidia.

But he also flagged some industry trends to watch, including enterprise clients opting to use older models or build their own, and token pricing coming under pressure as users embrace open-source models, raising questions over the size of the market opportunity for the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.

Navigating a new world

Wick weighed in on how a young person can get ahead in the AI era.

"It used to be that a degree in computer science was a ticket to success," he said.

A better option today might be to learn a trade, as there's "booming demand" for workers such as electricians and HVAC technicians, and they can make an "incredibly good living" without having to go to a four-year college, Wick said.

He also took aim at the "doom-and-gloom notion that AI is going to eviscerate demand" for human labor. He described that worry as a "little premature" as nobody knows for sure how AI will affect entry-level roles in the future, unemployment is yet to soar, and there's always inertia when it comes to businesses and consumers changing their behavior.