{"slug": "the-real-reason-people-hate-ai-data-centers-so-much", "title": "The real reason people hate AI data centers so much", "summary": "AI data centers are facing a populist backlash as communities across the U.S. protest their energy demands, rising electricity rates, air pollution, noise, and water scarcity. A proposed 347,000-square-foot facility in the San Francisco Bay Area has drawn over 18,000 signatures opposing it, reflecting deep anger that AI companies ignore at their peril.", "body_md": "When I shared [my predictions for AI in 2026 earlier this year](https://www.fastcompany.com/91461250/i-correctly-predicted-chatgpt-my-6-ai-predictions-2026), I snuck in a one-sentence nugget that turned out to be surprisingly prescient:\n\n“In 2026, I expect a populist backlash against the fact that data centers’ voracious energy demands are raising electricity rates for everyday people.”\n\nI was right to flag the problem. But even as an [AI](https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence) expert, I failed to predict its scope.\n\nPeople [hate AI data centers](https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/many-people-hate-data-centers-billions-in-tax-breaks). [They’ve been blamed](https://www.fastcompany.com/91553925/the-backlash-against-ai-in-4-charts) for [high electric bills](https://www.fastcompany.com/91427779/america-has-plenty-of-electricity-so-why-is-your-bill-skyrocketing-electricity-ai-electric-bills), but also [air pollution](https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health-economic-risks-from-ai-data-centers/), [odd humming noises](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/us/data-centers-noise-pollution.html), water scarcity, [fiscal decline](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/states-offer-tax-breaks-ai-data-centers-americans-dont-want/6507973/), and much else.\n\nTo be sure, plunking a 300,000-square-foot building filled with [power-hungry servers](https://www.fastcompany.com/91562830/power-energy-guzzling-ai-data-centers-getting-fast-tracked-thanks-federal-regulators) in the middle of a community comes with costs and challenges.\n\nBut the national uproar over data centers reflects a much deeper anger. AI companies ignore it at their peril.\n\nAs a journalist, I only fully understood the popular outrage around [AI centers](https://www.fastcompany.com/section/data-centers) when I wrote [a story about one coming to my own backyard in the San Francisco Bay Area](https://bayareatelegraph.com/2026/06/17/locals-are-upset-over-plans-for-a-massive-data-center-in-contra-costa-county/).\n\nThat data center—which has already been approved by the local municipality—will take over a former golf course. At around 347,000 square feet, it’s big, but nowhere near the massive scale of facilities in the Midwest, which [can top 1 million square feet](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/18/inside-the-worlds-most-powerful-ai-datacenter/).\n\nShovels haven’t even hit the earth on the project, but locals are already up in arms. They’ve flooded local city council meetings with protestors and gathered [more than 18,000 signatures opposing the new building](https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-data-center-from-coming-to-pittsburg-ca). A social media post I wrote about my story has received 44,000 views and 100-plus comments.\n\nMost of the concerns are familiar ones, echoing criticisms occurring all around the country. In a time when energy is already blindingly expensive, many Americans [worry that data centers will raise their utility bills](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-know-about-energy-use-at-us-data-centers-amid-the-ai-boom/).\n\nMany data centers have massive diesel generators, intended to keep the servers humming if the local power grid goes down. Lots of people [worry that those generators will belch smog and cause health issues](https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health-economic-risks-from-ai-data-centers/).\n\nThe more environmentally minded often point to data centers’ [alleged massive water usage](https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption), often quoted in millions of gallons per day. And some people just feel that [they’re noisy and ugly](https://www.fastcompany.com/91538536/data-center-architecture-aesthetics).\n\nMany different people, in other words, have many different reasons for hating AI data centers. But as I’ve seen firsthand, that hatred is deep and abiding.\n\nAt first glance, this level of popular ire makes little sense. When you actually examine the data about data centers, many claims about their abject awfulness fail to hold up.\n\nAs *The Atlantic* recently reported, [fears about AI data centers driving up electric prices are often oversold](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/ai-data-center-electricity-water/687521/). A comprehensive study of the economics of data centers [recently found that they actually reduce electricity prices slightly](https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777).\n\nTexas is a perfect example of that fact. The state is [leading America’s data center boom, yet its electricity prices are among the lowest in the country](https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/the-grid/policy-brief-have-data-centers-driven-up-electricity-prices/). Prices, the data shows, are far more closely tied to grid investment and factors like wildfire risk than the presence of data centers.\n\nLikewise, [researchers say](https://www.construction-physics.com/p/i-was-wrong-about-data-center-water) that the stats about data center water usage are often taken out of context. Scary figures often count inane things, like the evaporation of water from reservoirs upstream of the data center itself. Indeed, my own local data center claims it will use less water than the golf course it’s replacing.\n\nData centers’ ugliness is subjective, of course. But the American heartland has plenty of ugly logistics centers and shipping warehouses that don’t prompt tens of thousands of people to sign petitions.\n\nAnd data center boosters can reasonably point to claims about the centers’ positive impacts. As *The Atlantic* shares, tax revenue from data centers can have massive benefits for small towns, and unlike older data centers, the AI ones [often create high-paying local jobs](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-evidence-on-data-center-employment-effects/) by attracting AI firms.\n\nGiven this encouraging data, why have AI data centers become such a hated piece of the American economy and landscape?\n\nBased on my own experience as a tech journalist and photographer, I believe the public anger about data centers actually points to a much bigger, deeper issue.\n\nAmericans are terrified of AI. They (often rightly) worry that the tech will take their jobs, render their kids’ lives meaningless, steal their personal information, and ultimately destroy American culture.\n\nA recent [Pew study finds](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/) that most Americans think AI will be bad for society, with 63% feeling that the tech is moving too fast. Almost three-quarters of Americans think AI will make their data less secure. And most (71%) feel that governments will fail to regulate the tech.\n\nSo there’s a lot of fear and anger around the technology. But the tricky part is that AI is largely invisible.\n\nContrast AI with another much-maligned technology of our modern age: the smartphone. Smartphones are extremely visible. You’re probably holding one right now.\n\nThat tangible, visible nature makes them a far easier target for expressions of anger and fear. Schools [can ban them](https://www.foxla.com/news/california-ab-3216-phone-free-schools-act-smartphone-ban), and parents can [sign pledges not to buy them for their kids](https://www.waituntil8th.org/).\n\nIndividuals can lash out against their phone by [hiding it in a special, signal-blocking bag](https://godarkbags.com/products/godark-faraday-bags-stop-hacking-and-location-tracking-of-your-cell-phone-and-tablet?srsltid=AfmBOoq7x0pg8Y_jNZQpRK08TTmSKsXRCTq6stOTHpyO0WaMDg_4JUJY) or [“bricking” it](https://getbrick.com/) with a special dongle. Members of Gen Z can rebel against it by [buying a dumbphone instead](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/27/the-boring-phone-stressed-out-gen-z-ditch-smartphones-for-dumbphones).\n\nAI is different. Although the technology is everywhere, AI is rarely physically embodied.\n\nAs a photojournalist, I know this challenge all too well. If I want to visually depict self-driving cars or cryptocurrency, all I have to do is take a train to downtown San Francisco and photograph a Waymo or a Bitcoin ATM.\n\nIf I want to visually depict AI, though, I have almost no options. Journalists covering the tech often resort to vague illustrations of neural networks, tortured visual metaphors (a white robot sitting at a computer, anyone?), or photos of AI’s leaders.\n\nThis visibility problem extends to popular expressions of anger, fear, and protest about AI and its impacts.\n\nAgain, if you want to express your anger about smartphones, you have plenty of tangible, visual options, from dumbphones to Faraday bags to [the good old-fashioned sledgehammer](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8qJjFCGPYnE).\n\nProtesting a nebulous, invisible technology is much harder. AI sits in an abstract cloud, silently altering society in radical, earth-shaking ways while maintaining no presence in the physical world.\n\nNo presence, that is, aside from data centers.\n\nThese odd, isolated buildings are the rare places where the world of AI intersects with the real world. They make clumsy, imperfect metonyms for the technology itself. But they’re all people have.\n\nAnd so, people hate them with a burning, fiery passion—not necessarily because the buildings are objectively so awful, but because they’re the only tangible representation of a technology that most Americans find terrifying and bewildering.\n\nThe data center backlash, in other words, isn’t only about the centers—it’s about AI itself.\n\nAI companies would do well to remember that when they communicate with everyday communities. Patronizing messages about how data centers are actually good for the local tax base, or how they’ll drive investment in grid infrastructure, are likely to fall on deaf ears.\n\nPeople who are furious about the tech want their opinions to be heard—not to read nerdy explainers about water usage or carbon emissions.\n\nBetter transparency from the companies developing frontier models, more opportunities for everyday people to shape AI policy, and more consistent government oversight will help to address public anger.\n\nNaively arguing about the technical specifics of data centers, rather than addressing the issue at its roots, won’t.\n\nThe stakes are high. [Violent threats against data centers](https://www.newsweek.com/data-center-backlash-threats-violence-anger-spreads-12091889) and even individual AI workers are on the rise. Last year, a man was arrested in San Francisco for[ firebombing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house](https://apnews.com/article/openai-altman-fire-attack-8cf275557636e0229e0111dbf3a0a47e).\n\nPeople need more outlets to share their fears and concerns about the tech. Otherwise, any physical manifestation of the AI boom, from its buildings to its people, will remain in the public’s crosshairs—both figuratively and, to an alarmingly increasing extent, literally.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-real-reason-people-hate-ai-data-centers-so-much", "canonical_source": "https://www.fastcompany.com/91563531/real-reason-people-hate-ai-data-centers-so-much", "published_at": "2026-06-25 12:39:08+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-25 13:19:43.530609+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Fast Company", "San Francisco Bay Area", "Contra Costa County", "Microsoft", "Pew Research Center", "Harvard T.H. 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