AI Companies Are Thirsty for Data Centers, but Americans Oppose Them Nearby

Source Domain: www.cnet.com

There’s a growing backlash against the construction of local data centers, which consume massive amounts of electricity for compute and water for cooling in order to power artificial intelligence. According to a newly released Gallup survey, 7 out of 10 (71%) Americans oppose new AI data center construction in their area, with nearly half (48%) saying they’re strongly opposed.

Data centers have drawn increased scrutiny and resistance, with concerns about water shortages, noise and air pollution, and the depletion of land and energy resources. Communities across the US have protested new construction, and calls for moratoriums and bans have been growing.

This is the first poll that Gallup has conducted about data centers. The results highlight some of the reasons Americans oppose them, with environmental impacts, such as energy and water consumption, topping the list. Other reasons include quality-of-life concerns, the effects data centers might have on utility builds, pollution and negative views of AI itself.

Another survey question asked respondents about their attitudes toward the construction of a nuclear power plant to generate electricity. Nuclear power plants are viewed more positively than data centers, with 53% opposing them.

Those in favor of data centers in their area cited economic benefits such as job opportunities and tax revenue, and technology benefits, such as meeting the demand for AI tech.

The data center race

The data center race is driven by companies at the forefront of AI technology — OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Anthropic and others — as they compete for control of the industry. For its part, Nvidia dominates the AI chip market, providing high-performance GPUs and CPUs that populate data centers.

The AI race has become so competitive that there is talk of building data centers in space (as SpaceX’s Elon Musk has proposed), at sea and even in people’s backyards. Anthropic and SpaceX recently signed a major data center deal that…

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