Americans Have Grown Dramatically Anti-Data Center

falkensmaize

It seems like there’s very little upside to allowing one in your state. They don’t bring in large amounts of new jobs once construction is done, they leech power and water like vampires increasing costs and depleting resources, they add noise and light pollution to nearby areas, they’re ugly. They only seem to benefit large tech companies.

mycall

Yet they still love ordering from Amazon.

pfannkuchen

Media: "X is horrible!" <6 months later> Media: "Americans Don't Like X"

resfirestar

I have several friends who used to lament the loss of manufacturing jobs as a ticket to the middle class, but now say they're going to protest a proposed data center, which feels a bit ironic. None really link it to AI's social impact like Gizmodo does here, the argument always starts with "I don't understand what they need a data center for" (often genuinely wanting me to explain it since I work with computers) and then goes into noise, water use, or loss of farmland. I'd probably not want to live near the noise pollution of a data center or any other kind of noisy industry either, so their views aren't incomprehensible or anything (though the farmland one makes zero sense to me), but it does seem like an instance of the revealed preference that many Americans are just deeply skeptical of anything more intensive than an Amazon warehouse going on in their area, even if they enjoy a fantasy version of the country where (usually other) people have a nice union job in a widget factory. It's good to remember when political extremists try to claim there's some easy fix that will make America an industrial powerhouse again; in reality, most of us don't want anything close to that.