Giant data centers have been stirring controversy across the U.S. and in New England, where proposals to build even smaller data centers have met major community pushback. When data centers are up for public discussion, communities often express similar fears: that a data center would impact the local environment or increase energy prices.
But those aren’t the only topics that come up at public hearings over data centers.
“It powers the things in society that are breaking us apart,” said Kai Wiswall of Massachusetts, at a city council meeting in Holyoke about a ban on data centers.
“Data centers are being pushed by millionaires and their profit interests,” said Jackie Elliot of Maine, during a meeting of that state’s Data Center Advisory Board.
“Call them surveillance centers, because that’s what they are,” said Kelly Potanza, at a meeting about data centers in Rochester, New Hampshire.
Experts keeping an eye on this tumultuous moment for data centers argue that for many people, the facilities represent something greater than their material impacts. They are a proxy for fears about the industry that’s driving this boom in development: artificial intelligence.
“We have this industry that is clearly extractivist and not benefiting people,” said Emily Bender, professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington. “And then we are being asked to accept the physical infrastructure with its material consequences in our backyards.”
Bender says while some types of AI technology have tangible benefits in sectors like medicine and the hard sciences, in other instances it’s been forced into already-functional tech, like email and search engines. She said that process also pushes out people who used to perform the work that is now outsourced to AI.
“People are finding that those who used to get paid, used to sort of scrounge together a career to be paid as artists, are losing work,” Bender said. “Same for translators, right? Same for transcriptionists. There's many, many sectors where people are losing access to the kinds of freelance work that they would do.”
Communities debating data centers can feel those disruptions brought on by AI, Bender said. The rush to develop the facilities also comes with a story that she says people aren’t convinced by.
“This inevitability narrative that comes from the tech companies that AI is coming, or these systems are here to stay, and you just have to live with them,” she said. “And none of that is true. And I think the resistance to data centers really shows that people aren’t buying it.”
Bipartisan opposition
Opposition to data centers is showing up across the political spectrum in a way few other issues do.
“Majorities of Democrats and Republicans, majorities of 2024 Harris voters vs.Trump voters, majorities of liberals and conservatives, all opposed the construction of data centers in their communities,” said Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The school ran a poll on data center sentiment in September. While the top concerns among residents were environmental impacts and disruptions to local communities, general distrust of AI and the industry ranked high – even higher than worries about rising utility bills. Around 13% of those polled said they don’t trust the technology, and they don’t trust the people behind it, like X’s Elon Musk or OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
“And that is pushing them to have some skepticism about their communities contributing to or being part of this economic development and this social development that they don't see as being entirely positive,” Rhodes said.
People expressed this mistrust in Holyoke, Massachusetts earlier this year. A developer was proposing a small-scale data center that, on paper, wouldn’t have had a major impact on energy prices or the local environment. But a group of residents, led by city councilor Mimi Panitch, stopped it in its tracks – by passing an outright ban on data centers in the city.
“We don’t want outside interests telling us that Holyoke is going to be an economic sacrifice zone, or an environmental sacrifice zone,” Panitch said.
Panitch said she filed the data center ban resolution in Holyoke to protect residents from large tech companies that she feared would trample over officials in the small Western Massachusetts city. She’s still worried the breakneck pace of AI growth and accompanying data center development in other parts of the country is leaving meaningful discussions on safety by the wayside.
“You need, to a certain extent, get rid of the ethos that says ‘we are the masterminds of our world now, we move fast and break things,’” Panitch said.
She compared AI expansion to how social media grew rapidly in the 2010s. That technology became ubiquitous long before regulators had a chance to understand its potential harms. Panitch said that’s made it harder for her to believe tech leaders have people’s best interests in mind.
“I think we have been perhaps too willing to assume that anyone who comes into a Senate hearing sounding confident, and having made a lot of money, actually knows what they're doing,” she said.
Kristen Mello has been leading the fight against a proposed data center in her community of Westfield, Massachusetts. That city passed a one-year moratorium on the facilities, around the same time as Holyoke, and earlier this month, the city council denied a permit extension for a proposed data center that had been in the works since 2019. Mello said there is one big benefit to the seemingly endless debate.
“Public participation has totally increased,” she said. “Which is good. Because the more voices we have, the more responsive government becomes.”
This story is part of Awaiting Data, a special series from the New England News Collaborative.