As a chatbot, search summary, or workplace tool, AI has been integrated into many Americans’ daily routines. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in February 2026 found that 49 percent of U.S. adults reported using chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini, up from 33 percent of adults in 2024. About a quarter of adults said they use them daily. Using AI is often a quick and simple thing: you ask a question, and you receive an answer.
The infrastructure behind the AI we have so quickly grown accustomed to, however, is anything but simple. Data centers, transmission lines, high water demand, and added strain on electric grids are some of the logistical requirements for AI, and they are expanding just as rapidly as the technology itself.
Gallup found in a March survey that seven in 10 Americans oppose the idea of data center construction in their local communities. More recent Reuters/Ipsos polling from June, with about a 2-point margin of error, found that only one in three Americans approves of the fast pace of data-center construction, and only 14 percent support a data center being built in their own community. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they were worried that AI would make electricity more expensive.
Part of the backlash is likely a reaction to scale. AI’s rapid growth has turned the need for data centers into a national construction rush. There are 710 data centers in operation in the United States, with another 1,062 planned projects.
The demands of those facilities are significant. They cover large areas of land and require both extensive amounts of electricity to operate and substantial access to water to cool the equipment. In several instances, existing power grids have already been unable to match the rapid rise in demand from data centers.
Residents also point to a more ordinary but constant burden of data centers: the noise. Kathy Kulick, a resident of Virginia who leads a group of anti-data center homeowners, told reporters that “Data center cooling equipment never turns off. Never. The communities that are inundated with this are truly living in hell.”
Real questions about the costs of data centers on residents of affected communities are cropping up at the level of state politics.
A June University of Texas at Austin poll of 1,200 registered voters found that, with a 2.8-point margin of error, 56 percent of voters oppose the construction of a data center in their community. Only 29 percent supported data center construction, while 16 percent were undecided.
The speed of AI’s physical expansion requires fast answers from legislators on who is footing the bill for data centers. Gov. Greg Abbott called earlier this month for Texas electricity regulators to protect residential ratepayers from data center infrastructure costs. Some of Abbott’s proposals include strict mandates on the use of water systems and the construction of new power facilities for the data centers.
The AI boom may be national, but it is on the local level that the impact of its infrastructure is felt. A multibillion-dollar data-center company can place a pin on a map that fits its requirements, but unless companies and regulators can answer local concerns, AI data centers will face an uphill battle.
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