Sam Altman doesn’t need to see the polls. The OpenAI CEO knows how unpopular his industry has become.
“Clearly, people hate data centers—right now, at least,” Altman told Time as part of a series of interviews for a cover story published on Wednesday. “People are pretty negative on AI.”
Data centers in particular have become quite the pariah.
Altman has previously spoken about the backlash against the industry, including local opposition to data center projects nationwide.
“I understand emotionally why people don’t want data centers in their backyard in the same way that I don’t really want a nuclear power plant next to my house, even though I know it’s a super safe thing,” Altman said during an interview last month.
In March, Altman was blunt in his assessment at a BlackRock event.
“AI is not very popular in the US right now,” Altman said during BlackRock’s US Infrastructure Summit in Washington, D.C.
In April, an attacker threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s San Francisco mansion and later threatened to burn down OpenAI before being taken into custody.
“A lot of the criticism of our industry comes from sincere concern about the incredibly high stakes of this technology,” Altman wrote in a post on his personal blog after the attack. He added that “overall, I believe technological progress can make the future unbelievably good, for your family and mine. “
Some companies, including OpenAI, have taken steps to address some of the biggest flashpoints in the data center debate, including water usage and power consumption. OpenAI has also announced community benefits, including Codex credits for eligible students in Ohio, Georgia, and Michigan, three places where it’s building data centers.
The backlash has only continued to grow
In the last month, governors in Pennsylvania and Texas, both of whom are running for reelection in November, sought to curtail future data center development in their states after previously extolling the benefits of such projects. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, who once said his state was the “epicenter of AI development,” said the industry had only itself to blame.
“They pop up in places that nobody ever heard of before, until they started the construction,” Abbott said on Sunday during an interview on ABC’s “This Week”. “And so, they had not been working in collaboration with the state, they’d not been in collaboration with local governments, and so they basically dug their own grave for the problem that’s been caused for them and that’s why they got the backlash they deserve.”
To top it all off, Super Bowl champion Jason Kelce starred in a cheeky ad for his and his brother Travis’ beer company, Garage Beer, and canned water brand Liquid Death, where he suggested that people send their pee to data centers — adding a whole new dimension to the phrase “pissed off.”
Investor Chamath Palihapitiya, co-host of the “All-In Podcast,” compared the situation to a “powder keg.” He said, “The safer bet may be that the pushback and resistance grow.”
“Data centers have unfortunately become THE symbolic representation of the asymmetric upside for a very narrow tech elite and a class that are untrustworthy,” Palihapitiya wrote in a post on X last week.
And even President Donald Trump, who has fashioned himself as a champion of the industry and argued that strict regulations could cost the US in the AI race, recently suggested data centers might benefit from a better message.
“I would say that maybe it could use a little public relations help,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
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