In a choice between public services and AI power, the latter should win, says OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Many voters and taxpayers don’t agree

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, frames the need to build data centres around the risk of having to choose between curing cancer and improving public education.

In a blog post, the 40-year-old billionaire wrote: “If AI stays on the trajectory that we think it will, then amazing things will be possible. Maybe with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to cure cancer. Or with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to provide customised tutoring to every student on earth. If we are limited by compute, we’ll have to choose which one to prioritise; no one wants to make that choice, so let’s go build.”

Altman reiterated his argument that “the world needs much more compute” on Monday after the ChatGPT maker announced a multibillion-dollar deal to acquire AI infrastructure from the chip designer Advanced Micro Devices. The deal came hot on the heels of chip designer Nvidia’s announcement in September that it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI to build AI infrastructure and new data centres with a capacity of at least 10 gigawatts of power, or the equivalent of peak electricity demand in New York.

Yet despite the bold claims of AI’s potential by tech bosses, the reality of building computing power in the present is being met with scepticism by communities facing a sharp increase in data centre proposals.

In Indiana, where Google formally withdrew a $1.5 billion data centre proposal last week after fierce local opposition, Bryce Gustafson, an organiser at Citizens Action Coalition, which campaigns on energy issues, said data centres were largely seen as a “nuisance” being built for non-essential generative AI, in what feels like an “invasion of Indiana”.

Gustafson said: “I think most people just want to get on Google and get a search engine … And all of a sudden they’re confronted with this AI stuff. When we all go home and watch our streaming service, it works fairly well. The internet’s doing OK, it’s staying afloat.”

Gustafson said he had “never seen” such a large opposition, including from Republican city councillors, to a local issue as he did with Google’s data centre, which raised fears of further increases in utility bills. “People are extraordinarily sensitive to rate increases,” he said. “Why are they coming here? They want our water. They want our tax breaks.”

In the past 15 months, about ten data centre projects have been halted in Indiana following public opposition. In some cases, the opposition has been to farmland being reclassified as industrial land. Even in some instances when politicians have approved re-zoning, residents have filed lawsuits to try to prevent the developments.

In Amarillo, Texas, Fermi America, co-founded in January by the former US energy secretary Rick Perry, is betting on the potential of Project Matador, a development site spanning more than 5,000 acres that the company has leased from a local university. The developers, who also like to refer to the site as the President Donald J Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus, hope to attract tenants such as xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic to occupy data centres powered by a combination of natural gas, solar energy and nuclear power.

Fermi has yet to generate any revenue, sign any tenants or secure a licence for nuclear power generation. Yet, already local protesters have expressed concerns about the burden of the project on the town’s already stressed water supply.

Meanwhile, in Memphis, Tennessee, Elon Musk is hoping to leap ahead in the AI arms race by developing Colossus data centres for xAI, dividing the city over the huge power and water demands of the infrastructure.

Tech companies should be worried that protest groups, unconvinced by the benefits of data centres, are mobilising. Gustafson said he had been contacted by protesters seeking advice on how to block planning proposals from states including Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Will Rinehart, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the tech giants would need to win support at a local level if they are to achieve their AI ambitions, because states have swaying powers over development approvals.

“There are benefits that come with these [AI infrastructure] systems, primarily in tax revenue, but those are really diffuse and usually people don’t see them very clearly,” he said. “The costs are very localised. People see it on their energy bill. So, those two things combined, you know, good luck to the tech companies.”

https://www.thetimes.com/us/business/article/invasion-of-the-data-centres-pits-big-tech-against-americans-053b920lr