Recently, artificial intelligence data centers have become public enemy number one. The concern: how much water and electricity they consume, how much noise they create, the massive structures they bring to communities, and the technology they enable that may or may not take away all our jobs and usher in a robot apocalypse.
Earlier this year, Gallup found that 71% of Americans opposed establishing AI-enabled data centers in their communities. Opposition is strong on both sides of the aisle: Most Democrats, Republicans and independents oppose local construction.
Even in Texas, where data center development is booming, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has slammed the brakes. In September, he directed state regulators to suspend the issuance of data center licenses pending a review of their impact on the power grid and water resources.
While many data center projects have been shelved, others are still under construction, and the companies behind them are hiring experts like Nicole Thomas to pave the way.
Thomas is senior vice president of media and community engagement at JSA, a marketing and public relations firm representing data center companies. she and Today, explain Co-host Sean Rameswaram talks about how the industry is dealing with public opposition and why she thinks these facilities can still be good neighbors.
Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s more to the full podcast, listen Today, explain No matter where you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora and Spotify.
You’ve been in this business for 21 years. Obviously, 21 years ago, data centers were not as hot a topic as they are today. When did you notice this shift?
I would say about two years ago. I got into the industry myself about four and a half years ago. I come from a state transportation background where community involvement is critical. When you build a new traffic intersection, they want you to interact with the public.
When I got into the industry, I said, “Oh, how’s your community engagement?” They said, “We don’t even have any community engagement in this industry.” And they weren’t wrong. Because 21 years ago, [data centers] Just like infrastructure. It’s like building a warehouse for your computer. So it’s very similar to how Costco was built.
You just go in and apply for a zoning permit, and the zoning board says, “Yeah, this works. Stamp, boom.” And then you build your data center. In fact, it used to be very secretive, because data, and that data fell into the wrong hands, there were a lot of consequences. [cybersecurity] Influence. About two years ago, we started noticing mainstream journalists asking questions about the data center. For me, that’s when it started.
I think it still feels mysterious to a lot of people, and that’s why people are angry. If you know about this information center proposed in Utah Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O’Learycatching many people off guard. Currently, seventy percent of Americans don’t want them in their backyards. How do you try to change the minds of those 70%?
First of all, I think education is very important. So one of the things we noticed early on was that because of the previously confidential nature of the data centers, there wasn’t a lot of education about what they were. This is what we need to change. We need to make a connection between [phones] and data centers so that people understand what data centers mean for their daily lives.
Every app on your phone needs a data center to hold your information. When you enter your password into anything, you are interacting with the data center, which will verify your password and then let you into the application. Not to mention that all the information you store about yourself in the app is stored in the data center for easy recall at any time.
Without digital infrastructure, we wouldn’t be able to hold this call. This is not the case. We wouldn’t have email without digital infrastructure. Statistically, about 70% of people don’t want a data center in their backyard—I’d be interested to know how many people actually live near a data center but don’t realize it.
Because there are some humble data centers working quietly near your home that have been around for decades without you even knowing it. So, in some ways, I feel, and I think the industry as a whole does, but I won’t speak for them, the resistance to data centers is somewhat related to the resistance to artificial intelligence, because people don’t have control over artificial intelligence.
Sam Altman even told us that artificial intelligence will destroy society. So you have this concern about artificial intelligence, you don’t know how to control it, but you can defer data centers. Therefore, people try to overthrow or move away from these data centers, and these data centers become the physical manifestation of artificial intelligence.
This is understandable. I am a citizen too. You’re a citizen, and if things come into my community, I want to know about them. I have questions. There’s a big data center that just came to my community not too long ago and their community engagement is terrible, absolutely terrible.
I’m in Indiana, and I won’t say which hyperscale it was, but hyperscale came into — I would say, not my community, but it came into my city. They’re certainly not in my backyard, but they are in my city. So we blame them because their community engagement is essentially non-existent.
Wait, you work in data center PR, but you blame the data center for not being transparent enough in the community?
I’m on the side of responsible development.
We all agree that we need X, Y, and Z clouds. And it was worth it so I could take lots of photos. I think everyone is happy with it.
But the problem here is that people are not necessarily very interested in artificial intelligence, but we are moving forward very quickly anyway. How do you differentiate this basic need of ours from artificial intelligence, which people don’t necessarily see as essential to their lives?
I think it goes back to education. Let consumers understand the differences between data centers: small data centers, medium data centers, large data centers. Educate them about why the data center exists and how they interact with it multiple times a day.
I heard it. But again, I feel like the issue here isn’t the data centers that my phone needs, it’s the data centers that these AI companies need, and these AI companies that the public doesn’t necessarily trust because they keep telling us they’re going to kill us, and who the public is wary of because they don’t want their jobs replaced by artificial intelligence.
There are many reasons why people are skeptical of new technologies. So how do you deal with this fear and those people specifically?
I think it’s again about understanding the actual hub of data that’s being built in your community. Is it a 5 MW data center? That will never accommodate artificial intelligence. This is not enough to accommodate artificial intelligence. Is it a 1 GW data center like Mr. Wonderful in Utah? That’s different.
But I think artificial intelligence will probably be a lightning rod for the American public for a long time to come. There will be people who are against AI, there will be people who are for AI, and there will be people in the middle. I think, for us, this is education, educating the community.
Have you ever been involved in a project that was rejected by a community, and then you guys packed your bags and said, “Okay, let’s go find another community?“
Yes. We’ve had clients who have had pushback from residents who say, “Let’s have a one-on-one community meeting where people can come in and ask us questions.”
After the question is answered, the community goes away and says, “Well, this isn’t as bad as I thought.” Or we have a community that says, “No, we’re pausing all our data centers right now.”
Sometimes they wait for their clients – my client is a developer and they have clients they are developing. If the customer is willing to wait, then we may try to resolve the issue with the community. But a lot of times, they just say, some communities actually throw up their hands and say, “We want a data center. We want one. We want two. Bring it here.”
As a result, some communities recognize the benefits of data centers. There will be other communities that say, “No, we don’t want this.” And then in five, six, eight years, they’ll say, “Wow, that county has a lot of tax revenue. They have a lot of cool stuff. Why don’t we?” The answer will be the data center.
I don’t think this is going to end anytime soon, right? I advise my clients that we could still be here three to five years from now, really trying to help the American public understand the benefits of data centers. But it’s going to take a lot of education across the industry, and once we plant those seeds, I have no doubt they will grow into educated community members who make informed decisions about bringing community-minded data centers into their communities.