Big Tech companies have gone into town, cities, and states in a stealth effort to build massive buildings – some 32 football fields long– to power their AI products. Americans are, to put it bluntly, royally pissed. Even in conservative states like Texas. Data centers cause household utilities to rise, are noisy, and decrease property values.
As a result, the Texas Tribune reports, ”[A]rmies of concerned neighbors… have become their own private detectives in search of signs or confirmation about data center plans in lieu of public disclosures, pestering local officials at meetings or in the grocery store and sharing their findings across Facebook groups with thousands of members.”
The lightning fast backlash to what AI companies are doing in the dark of night has, so far, been working. Many data centers are being built. But thousands of others have been put on hold or cancelled, in part as a result to the wicked bipartisan backlash.