America on Data Centers: listen to 10,000+ city council comments

afandrew

This is Andrew, Founder/CEO of Prophecy Gov (AI agents for city governments). We operate American Sentiment. Our main focus is building AI tools that serve city staff. We also create data from public, online data sources; in this case city council videos. Data center development has reached a fever pitch nationwide. We started American Sentiment to help AI leaders, researchers, and the public better understand and respond to local sentiment nationwide. The American Sentiment on Flock Safety is next! Analysis: https://x.com/andrewfang/status/2117048211051532555 Findings include: -73% of meetings had 0 people speaking in favor of data centers. -Water use was the #1 issue. And only 1 in 5 comments mention AI! -Elon Musk was mentioned more than Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Kevin O'Leary combined. -Data center opposition is heavily bipartisan.

tptacek

Negative comments on data centers, or power plants, or day care, or apartment buildings, or coffee shops, or new fire hydrants are exactly what you'd expect from the (demented, sometimes literally) municipal public comment process, which sharply biased towards negative comments structurally --- people turn out because they're risk-averse and don't want to see change that could impact their own homes, and virtually nobody turns out for the abstract upside of new development --- and also demographically: public comment skews sharply older, wealthier, and towards homeowners. The public comment process is an anti-democratic pox on our system (all the political systems that support it) and we should all be shifting to a mode where we more openly impeach it. Public comment is one of the first principal components of the American housing shortage.

vatsachak

I'm pro AI and data center but a lot of construction is short sighted. They should invest money into improving electric and community infrastructure. There are so many win-wins to be had and they fumbled

Waterluvian

If there’s really trillions of dollars of market cap to be had, why not just build in the middle of nowhere northern Québec and Ontario and build your own damn dams and infrastructure? You’ve got a ton of water. A ton of famously cheap hydro electricity potential. An entire service industry for remote mines (who will build your roads and power). And you’re not being an unwanted bastard. My sense is that the answer is very simple: because they can just use someone else’s.

lnkdinsuxs

Data centers and power plants to power them are the new oil. Also, just like oil is dirty, bad for the environment and kills people, so will the data centers. And the power plants to power them. Our options are not to not have Data centers and their power plants but whether to have them built elsewhere (even outside the US) and pay rent or own them and get paid the rent. Arguments about having more efficient or green Data centers and power plants miss the point. Engineering is a process of iterative improvement - you don't begin with the perfect product, you begin with one that crashes, burns and breaks some bones. It's understandable though that no one one wants to be "it".

BatchJob

Sounds like people figured out how unsustainable data centers are and that they create no jobs. That should be enough to stop it. But not in America.

WarmWash

By my job their is a large vacant lot where they wanted to build a distribution center with over 125 truck bays. Absolutely gargantuan. Guaranteed trucks coming and going non-stop, lots more traffic, lots more noise, diesel engines idling all day. There is a school and a neighborhood immediately adjacent on one side, and commercial space and a minor highway on the other sides. Apparently the developer was approached about the possibility of building a DC there, and it set off a five alarm fire of hysteria in the town. Of course, no one even blinked about the warehouse. So now we are probably gonna get the hundreds of trucks 24/7 instead of the large quietly humming box (that would also probably increase tax revenue by 30%).

nickstinemates

Bring back the $50k house. Thousands of them. Have the data center builders build communities around the data center. Sold to first time home buyers only, with a X year lock-in period. Effectively free energy comes along with it. Prop up community infrastructure so small businesses can proliferate. Make the AI companies fully subsidize it instead of government. It would change the sentiment in the country in an instant as affordability wrt owning a home would be in reach.