What the midterm results actually mean for the future of AI and data centers: prepare for the AI slowdown
Sherrod Brown won back a Senate seat in Ohio after casting his opponent as a cheerleader for data centers, and Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Georgia governorship while backing a pause on new construction.
Key points
- Gallup found seven in ten Americans opposed to an AI data center in their area, and Pew finds that Americans who expect AI to hurt society outnumber those who expect it to help by more than two to one.
- There are terms that even data center opponents will accept, and they are easy wins: pay your own grid upgrade costs, sign longer contracts, publish water and energy use, and flex load at peak hours.
- Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned on a data center moratorium and a seat at the table for local communities, unseated a three-term incumbent who had never won the office by less than double digits.
Roughly three quarters of voters told the NBC News exit poll they oppose a data center in their own community, and more than half said AI and data centers were a major factor in their vote.
Additional details
- Texas as a data center test lab States and local governments weighing data centers need to study Texas.
- So what does this mean for what the industry has been calling an unstoppable technology?
- Surveillance pricing is the use of AI and individual consumer data like browsing history, purchase habits, or location to set a personalized price for each shopper.
- They do not like data centers and they expect AI to do more harm than good.
- The FTC moved in August with a proposed enforcement policy stating that undisclosed personalized pricing likely constitutes an unfair or deceptive practice, and states have begun moving on their own.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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