They are also noisy, polluting, and first and foremost we should endeavor to respect the will of the people in a democracy. Of course on some level it is a proxy against AI, but more importantly it's a proxy against the stratification of society. The problem is the gap between rich and poor.

> Communities dont own power production and if usage causes costs to increase then investment in more production will follow.

Years of higher electricity price is good reason to be against. The communities gain nothing from those data centers, so it is a bad deal.

And yes, AI industry made an extraordinary achievment in making themselves hated. 10/10 success of their own marketing and PR.

They’re almost universally bad for communities so constituents don’t want their councils to approve them?. It’s as simple as that.

Your town gets worse basically forever so the rich can get richer. Queue “hysteria”.

In addition to what others have already pointed out, these scumbags are also actively choosing to build these things in areas that are in ongoing deep drought conditions (going on years now in some places) and trying to buy up water rights for more water than the entire population of the area already uses just to survive. Why do they want to build these things in the worst possible place they can put them? What's the logic behind that? Oh yeah. Cheap land and corrupt officials... Nevermind...