As someone who has an educational background in AI and creates software models for a living, I think the AI backlash is a combination of people getting truly tired of big tech taking over more of their lives and the public faces of AI being about as punchable as imaginable. It's really not that hard to see why a group that simultaneously seems to want to put everyone out of work, and use large chunks of public land, often in existing neighborhoods, to do so is so hated.
Especially because for LLM based AI to be effective we really don't need this massive data center buildout in the first place. Smaller LLMs can approximate 90% of what the larger models can do and are much cheaper to use and maintain. The real reason for this crazy buildout is some odd obsession with a term no one in the industry can actually define, AGI. The real question Silicon Valley needs to ask itself is, how did a cult like movement (the rationalists, if you haven't heard of LessWrong.com or this movement it explains a lot) take over the biggest companies in the world?
As a consistent Republican voter who lives in the South, I was not surprised the GOP got destroyed last night, and for the following main reasons:
1) The conflict in Iran. Fairly obvious regarding gas prices, also hurting consumer good prices.
2) Grocery prices have not gone down in the last two years. A huge part of the what the GOP ran on in '24 was not fixed. Yet, Trump insisted on tariffs, which had a direct effect on consumers and were terrible from an optics standpoint. If you successfully timed the TACO trades and rode out the volatility, you made money in the markets, but the markets are not the economy. Income stagnation is not the way to appeal to the middle class, which Trump has never cared about. I will never understand those who vote against their financial interests.
3) Terrible candidates. Trump is why the Texas GOP nominated Paxton, who is despicable, and the SC GOP nominated Lindsay Graham's sister, which was indefensible. Trump did the same thing to the NC GOP in the '24 gubernatorial election with Mark Robinson. Trump has given political life to many in the GOP from '16 to '24, but over the course of the last two years he has taken it away. Last night was the culmination.
4) ICE invasions. Trump thought all of those Latinos who jumped ship to him in '24 would support the attempted mass deportation of people who looked liked them? Also, if Trump and his DOJ had their way, who wants to do the jobs those immigrants are filling and what happens when the price of labor increases?
Having stated the above, I do wholeheartedly agree AI data centers are wildly unpopular and Democratic candidates in both North and South Carolina portrayed their opponents as those who have and/or will take AI money. Fairly obvious that people do not want to live by a massive operation that they perceive will take their jobs, take up large swaths of real estate, and raise their electric and water bills.
But, Republicans had to support Trump, for funding and/or to get through a primary. Again, Trump giveth, Trump taketh away.
Regarding (B)- If they had a good argument to make they would be putting it in publically available writing for each data center outlining what their power and water use will be and what their taxes will be. Instead they are obscuring their individual arrangements and often making jurisdictions sign NDA's. They are losing individually and locally. Broad finger waving national arguments won't counter and will likely cause people to dig in further against.
you can run a version of deepseek or a similar chinese model on your phone or pc that will google search for you as good as google does for free and forever, so don't worry, your use case is not in danger. do not need data centers at this scale at all for 95% of what LLMs can do.
if data centres were really this important, the PRC would be building more. they aren't.
This feels very similar to the War of the Worlds radio drama scare (or at least the story told about it), with "average Americans" shooting at the weird futuristic robot they don't understand. Of course, they're partially rational to feel that way - there's no telling where the development of AI will ultimately lead us as a species - but it simultaneously feels irrational in the sense that "data center" is used as a totem for all our bad feelings about Silicon Valley, tech-bros, and six-fingered ChatGPT Miyazaki memes.
The population wants to bring Big Tech down a peg; if they could vote on breaking up Apple they'd do that, if they could vote on making every AI company pay a million dollars to food banks they'd do that... it just so happens that data centers are in the spotlight and on the ballot. There's no consideration of second-order effects (the future happening in Chongqing rather than Austin) because we use this vote as a self-deluded wave of our fairy wand, imagining that it will just make the whole thing disappear.
I think the anti-AI sentiment is neatly captured by the idea that replacing one's co-workers with a hallucinating machine does not improve one's work experience.
Layer onto that the idea that the best case scenario for voters is that AI doesn't replace them, just people like them, and the ceiling becomes alarmingly low for this tech as it impacts your average voter.
Now add in the failure of government to address dysfunctional student loans in a meaningful way over the past 20 years, and you're left with voters shouldering an un-expungable debt acquired in the pursuit of an evaporating job pool.
Why would the electorate choose to vote for their own professional extinction under those circumstances?
In multiple white collar professions, I have seen AI make certain species of well-educated workers either completely redundant or made many of their “skills” redundant. Through starting life with 16-20 years of education, we’ve developed generations filled with diligent conformists. Not very creative, or bright, or sophisticated , but diligent, organized, predictable, and relatively disciplined. They did boring but necessary work, even if they never had great ideas and you never really depended on them for their professional judgment or wisdom. AI is the end of that person. And this is not even getting into workers lower on the ladder.
That said, it’s inevitable. People can throw tantrums about AI and data centers etc…but it’s not only the future but the present. Politics can only do so much.
I think it's misguided to view this as a national issue with blanket boosterism or bans. Each agreement, watershed, and community is different. This is a local issue. The fact that it is happening so fast everywhere with nda's and strong arming of local officials is why it is facing a bipartisan local backlash. It's unfortunate it has been trending into a partisan issue nationally. Maybe this election will stop that.
I kid, I kid. Excellent article. My (more conservative than me) wife is in the doldrums today, but how anyone couldn't see this coming from a mile away had blinders on. AI/Data centers are the new Walmart as far as public opposition to them goes.
As someone who has an educational background in AI and creates software models for a living, I think the AI backlash is a combination of people getting truly tired of big tech taking over more of their lives and the public faces of AI being about as punchable as imaginable. It's really not that hard to see why a group that simultaneously seems to want to put everyone out of work, and use large chunks of public land, often in existing neighborhoods, to do so is so hated.
Especially because for LLM based AI to be effective we really don't need this massive data center buildout in the first place. Smaller LLMs can approximate 90% of what the larger models can do and are much cheaper to use and maintain. The real reason for this crazy buildout is some odd obsession with a term no one in the industry can actually define, AGI. The real question Silicon Valley needs to ask itself is, how did a cult like movement (the rationalists, if you haven't heard of LessWrong.com or this movement it explains a lot) take over the biggest companies in the world?
As a consistent Republican voter who lives in the South, I was not surprised the GOP got destroyed last night, and for the following main reasons:
1) The conflict in Iran. Fairly obvious regarding gas prices, also hurting consumer good prices.
2) Grocery prices have not gone down in the last two years. A huge part of the what the GOP ran on in '24 was not fixed. Yet, Trump insisted on tariffs, which had a direct effect on consumers and were terrible from an optics standpoint. If you successfully timed the TACO trades and rode out the volatility, you made money in the markets, but the markets are not the economy. Income stagnation is not the way to appeal to the middle class, which Trump has never cared about. I will never understand those who vote against their financial interests.
3) Terrible candidates. Trump is why the Texas GOP nominated Paxton, who is despicable, and the SC GOP nominated Lindsay Graham's sister, which was indefensible. Trump did the same thing to the NC GOP in the '24 gubernatorial election with Mark Robinson. Trump has given political life to many in the GOP from '16 to '24, but over the course of the last two years he has taken it away. Last night was the culmination.
4) ICE invasions. Trump thought all of those Latinos who jumped ship to him in '24 would support the attempted mass deportation of people who looked liked them? Also, if Trump and his DOJ had their way, who wants to do the jobs those immigrants are filling and what happens when the price of labor increases?
Having stated the above, I do wholeheartedly agree AI data centers are wildly unpopular and Democratic candidates in both North and South Carolina portrayed their opponents as those who have and/or will take AI money. Fairly obvious that people do not want to live by a massive operation that they perceive will take their jobs, take up large swaths of real estate, and raise their electric and water bills.
But, Republicans had to support Trump, for funding and/or to get through a primary. Again, Trump giveth, Trump taketh away.
Lack of people in AI making a compelling case to normies:
A) why AI will benefit them
B) why the most modern data centers probably aren’t that bad for environment and won’t raise local energy prices
Apparently the human in the loop forget/skipped the persuasion part
Regarding (B)- If they had a good argument to make they would be putting it in publically available writing for each data center outlining what their power and water use will be and what their taxes will be. Instead they are obscuring their individual arrangements and often making jurisdictions sign NDA's. They are losing individually and locally. Broad finger waving national arguments won't counter and will likely cause people to dig in further against.
you can run a version of deepseek or a similar chinese model on your phone or pc that will google search for you as good as google does for free and forever, so don't worry, your use case is not in danger. do not need data centers at this scale at all for 95% of what LLMs can do.
if data centres were really this important, the PRC would be building more. they aren't.
This feels very similar to the War of the Worlds radio drama scare (or at least the story told about it), with "average Americans" shooting at the weird futuristic robot they don't understand. Of course, they're partially rational to feel that way - there's no telling where the development of AI will ultimately lead us as a species - but it simultaneously feels irrational in the sense that "data center" is used as a totem for all our bad feelings about Silicon Valley, tech-bros, and six-fingered ChatGPT Miyazaki memes.
The population wants to bring Big Tech down a peg; if they could vote on breaking up Apple they'd do that, if they could vote on making every AI company pay a million dollars to food banks they'd do that... it just so happens that data centers are in the spotlight and on the ballot. There's no consideration of second-order effects (the future happening in Chongqing rather than Austin) because we use this vote as a self-deluded wave of our fairy wand, imagining that it will just make the whole thing disappear.
I think the anti-AI sentiment is neatly captured by the idea that replacing one's co-workers with a hallucinating machine does not improve one's work experience.
Layer onto that the idea that the best case scenario for voters is that AI doesn't replace them, just people like them, and the ceiling becomes alarmingly low for this tech as it impacts your average voter.
Now add in the failure of government to address dysfunctional student loans in a meaningful way over the past 20 years, and you're left with voters shouldering an un-expungable debt acquired in the pursuit of an evaporating job pool.
Why would the electorate choose to vote for their own professional extinction under those circumstances?
In multiple white collar professions, I have seen AI make certain species of well-educated workers either completely redundant or made many of their “skills” redundant. Through starting life with 16-20 years of education, we’ve developed generations filled with diligent conformists. Not very creative, or bright, or sophisticated , but diligent, organized, predictable, and relatively disciplined. They did boring but necessary work, even if they never had great ideas and you never really depended on them for their professional judgment or wisdom. AI is the end of that person. And this is not even getting into workers lower on the ladder.
That said, it’s inevitable. People can throw tantrums about AI and data centers etc…but it’s not only the future but the present. Politics can only do so much.
I think it's misguided to view this as a national issue with blanket boosterism or bans. Each agreement, watershed, and community is different. This is a local issue. The fact that it is happening so fast everywhere with nda's and strong arming of local officials is why it is facing a bipartisan local backlash. It's unfortunate it has been trending into a partisan issue nationally. Maybe this election will stop that.
Two stories of conservative opposition:
https://thedispatch.com/article/progressive-opposition-data-centers-ai/?gift_key=d7f37c1d785cd14c&gift_ref=c00d629e-4eff-4db1-a3f6-7bff1b8160ed&utm_source=giftlink&utm_campaign=membergift&utm_medium=copy_link
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2026/0901/utah-data-centers-stratos-project
Sorry! Linked wrong story in first link. This is link:
https://thedispatch.com/article/data-center-kentucky-land-environment/?gift_key=d7f3487d3c05729d&gift_ref=c00d629e-4eff-4db1-a3f6-7bff1b8160ed&utm_source=giftlink&utm_campaign=membergift&utm_medium=copy_link
Ethan,
Shut up and dribble.
I kid, I kid. Excellent article. My (more conservative than me) wife is in the doldrums today, but how anyone couldn't see this coming from a mile away had blinders on. AI/Data centers are the new Walmart as far as public opposition to them goes.