No Benefits: Why Most Americans Hate The Idea Of AI Data Centers

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

In recent months I’ve been asked by numerous readers to give my take on the AI data center issue and the debate it has ignited across the US. In response, I’ve jumped into a steep learning curve, but it seems to parallel information I’ve covered in previous articles on AI.

From what I can tell, both political parties are split on the data center debate. There are Democrats and Republicans on both sides of the divide, though their reasons for opposing or supporting the centers are not necessarily the same.

It’s clear that the Trump Administration has given its seal of approval on the concept and this has spurred many on the left to mindlessly attack it by default. Some conservatives support the centers simply because leftists complain about them. It’s important to move past the partisanship on this issue to get to the facts. According to polls, around 70% of Americans oppose new data centers in their communities, but why?

We might call it “infrastructure”, which sounds very important, but it’s clear that the reason for all the public apprehension about data centers is because no one has outlined any tangible benefits for the economy or society at large. Corporations and technocrats wax philosophical about a Utopian future, but this kind of rhetoric is rightly treated with suspicion.

People want to know, what is the actual point of building so many of these facilities? I’ll try to break it down in basic terms…

What Do Data Centers Actually Do?

The vast majority of new data centers (the recently approved facilities and those still in development) are server farms focused primarily on AI training or AI “inference”. The more controversial greenfield mega-campuses are disproportionately used for the training of “frontier AI models”. These models run trillions of parameters and eat up significant power, operating full tilt 24/7 until the AI is deemed ready for inference.

Once one model is finished with training, another model is immediately started. To put it simply, imagine that each of these data centers is an assembly line factory and each factory builds AI products. They are products which most people view as intangible and ethereal rather than practical.

We can see and use cars, we can see and use televisions and refrigerators, we can see the workers on the factory floor and we can see the jobs these products create. Not so much with AI and data centers, and this is one of the problems with trying to convince the public that such operations are necessary for the future well-being of the country.

In some cases AI training facilities convert partially or fully to inference operations. Meaning they handle the day-to-day functions of existing AI. So, every time you ask Chat GPT a question, or ask it to create an image for you, or ask it to make a ridiculous uncanny valley video for you, that request is processed by a data center somewhere (I used AI to make an image for this very article – It’s a tool, like any other tool).

This uses up electricity from the grid. Sometimes it uses a lot of electricity from the grid depending on what you are doing and how many millions of people are doing the same thing at any given moment.

If this all seems highly centralized, that’s because it is. There’s very little privacy in terms of using a cloud model AI. In fact, your conversations with an AI like Chat GPT or Gemini essentially become the property of the company that owns that AI, because the AI uses every conversation as a training opportunity.

In other words data centers exist to grow more and more AI models while making them smarter and smarter (in theory). But again, why should the average American give a damn about this?

The Global “Race” For AI Supremacy And The Information Economy

In every white paper I have ever read from organizations like the WEF, the UN, and government agencies around the world dealing with everything from military security to economic advancement, the same vision keeps popping up: Integrated AI systems at every level of society and a “4^th Industrial Revolution”.

The idea is that AI will run almost everything and that our entire evolution as a species will be transcendent because of this technology. At least, these are the musings of the technocrats. Some of them are well meaning and they truly dream of planet without scarcity. Others have distinctively nefarious agendas and they only taste power.

The latter group, from the evidence I have seen, views AI as a kind of “technological deity” – A machine god. They believe that if they pump all available information and enough computing power into these models, eventually one of them will hit “the singularity” point. This is the point at which an AI will supposedly become “sentient” and all-knowing.

I don’t think the singularity is a reality – I think it’s a pipe dream. That said, I do think AI is a very useful tool for making human beings even more lazy and easy to control if we allow it. As I’ve said in the past, the biggest threat from AI is NOT the rise of a “machine god” like “Skynet” from the Terminator movies, but the opportunity for complete apathy that this software creates. There are already far too many people who use AI to think for them instead of researching on their own.

The “information economy” is a more grounded notion of how AI might be applied, but it’s still a bit ridiculous. It’s the idea that larger economies will no longer rely on the production of tangible goods and resources to support the system. Rather, they will rely on the creation of digital products and the trading of data derived from algorithms.

If you think the global economy is fake now, you haven’t seen anything yet. This notion reminds me a lot of the tech bubble of the 1990s, the derivatives bubble of the early 2000s, and the dangerous Enron-like desire to create wealth through fiat concepts rather than making real and useful things. The AI bubble could be just as vaporous and destructive.

What Do Local Communities Get Out Of The “4th Industrial Revolution”

The Trump Administration is backing data centers from a place of economic ambition. He thinks this is an industrial competition and he believes that countries like China are going to strike some kind of AI gold while the US is left in the dust. He also has people in his ear who are fear mongering about the possibility of military disadvantage should other governments develop AI faster.

I can’t speak to the military applications because, frankly, they are entirely theoretical. If we are headed for a “Skynet” scenario then let’s hope I’m right and these apps are far less effective than they have been hyped up to be.

It’s also true that there are numerous foreign actors who prefer that the US doesn’t develop AI at an accelerated pace. This doesn’t mean that we should expend our resources chasing a digital phantom, but it’s obvious the Chinese would like to stay a step ahead even if it doesn’t gain them anything of substance in the end.

So far the biggest opposition to new data centers is rooted in concerns over power usage and increased utility bills for locals. Eyesore server farms with loud-ass fans ruining the serene landscapes of rural communities is not a good look. These communities are usually near hydro generators, solar farms, wind farms, etc. and are being targeted because of access to ample power and large plots of land at lower cost.

As someone who lives in one of these communities I can tell you right now, almost no one is going to jump on this bandwagon. Even with most of the population being hardcore conservative, and even with Trump selling the idea, they aren’t going for it. Rural Americans do not care about saving corporations money on electricity.

Maybe if companies and government officials finally built some friggin’ nuclear power plants instead of adding more strain to the grid, people would be less inclined to complain. They can put these data centers right next door to the plants and everyone can have cheap electricity. It’s a win-win.

What are the hard benefits of the centers? AI centers create some construction jobs for a few months. They offer around 100 to 200 permanent jobs in each community, but most of them are tech jobs in places where there is no tech labor pool, which means those people will have to be imported into the communities where these centers are built.

There’s expanded user access for the population at large. However, does anyone really care if they can’t make memes on Gemini or Grok anymore? Does any of this touch the lives of average American in a positive and meaningful way? I’m just not seeing it.

At most, communities that allow the establishment of data centers stand to gain some tax revenues, but that is all. I’m not completely dismissing the people who want to promote AI development, but none of them are conjuring up any selling points exciting enough to set imaginations aflame. This is not like the space race of the cold war era.

No one is clutching their chest in fear of “losing an AI race”. And, it’s not enough to jump blindly into the world of science fiction and paint grand pictures of a robot Utopia. We all know, deep down, that this is not going to happen, at least not for many generations to come.

When I look at the AI debate I see multiple factions, interests and visions colliding. Not everyone who wants data centers is some kind of demonic globalist looking for world domination. Some people truly desire a better future and they think AI is the way. On the other hand, not everyone who stands against data centers is a lefty communist, a Chinese agent or a “dumb country hick”. A lot of them are people with legitimate concerns and they still haven’t been offered a compelling reason why data centers should happen.

In the middle of all this, of course, we have the power mongers and nihilist elites who are only interested in using AI and the AI economy to further their own goals at the expense of the common man. They poison the well for everyone else.

I do wonder what would happen if these people and their armies of useful idiots were out of the way – Would AI development look completely different? Or maybe the public wouldn’t have any reason to be so suspicious of everything? Maybe the technology would progress more freely without constant fears of abuse?

It’s hard to say, but for now, most Americans oppose new data centers in their area. This is unlikely to ever change and trying to force the issue will only elicit anger.

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