Power to the People? Why AI Data Centers Face Growing Resistance, and How We Can Do Better

For a technology that is set to revolutionize our society, AI has been receiving a lot of pushback - from protests on the streets of India to the booing of AI CEOs on college commencement stages in the United States. AI data centers have become a central part of this resistance which, in some cases, has escalated, with anti-AI activists throwing acid on a data centre in Amsterdam and vandalizing an AI research institute in Montreal. Numerous jurisdictions, from cities like San Francisco to states like New York, have temporarily halted the construction of data centers as they grapple with citizen pushback, permitting and strain on local resources and energy grids. In my talk, I’ll explore why AI data centers have received so much opposition, what we know about their impacts on local communities, energy grids and the environment, and how we can collectively work to make them better.