Owners of data centres don't have any skin in the game. They are not affected by the negative consequences of the data centres. However, any rise in electricity prices, environmental and noise pollution, and the loss in property value primarily affects local residents, not the owner of the data centre.
All of this has been true ever since people started building large numbers of datacenters back in the 90s, but nobody organized protests about it until "datacenters" became a local proxy for "AI".
There was during the dot com bubble in 2000 and 2001, especially in California, where there also happened to be a power shortage and rolling blackouts.
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Owners of data centres don't have any skin in the game. They are not affected by the negative consequences of the data centres. However, any rise in electricity prices, environmental and noise pollution, and the loss in property value primarily affects local residents, not the owner of the data centre.
All of this has been true ever since people started building large numbers of datacenters back in the 90s, but nobody organized protests about it until "datacenters" became a local proxy for "AI".
There was no comparable push to build as many datacenters as quickly and with zero regard to anything else.
There was during the dot com bubble in 2000 and 2001, especially in California, where there also happened to be a power shortage and rolling blackouts.