How the AI Backlash Could Shape the Midterm Elections
Fears about AI-related job losses, surging electricity bills and data centers uprooting communities could take center stage for a growing number of political candidates in next year’s midterm elections.
Lately, Maura Keller—a Democrat running in Georgia’s 3rd Congressional district in next year’s midterm elections—has been going to community meetings where one topic comes up again and again “almost on a weekly basis”: data centers. It’s not hard to understand why the subject has surged to the fore. Keller has seen the state transform over the past few years into a hub for data centers, as AI companies buy up large swaths of cheap land to meet their ever-growing power needs.
People who live near the sites tell Keller they’re worried about how the data centers are affecting their drinking water, the cost of their electricity bills and their health. They talk about the loud humming sounds that emanate from the buildings, the constant bright lights and their fear that new developments coming to town will force them out of their homes—for example, by eminent domain. Driving back from a council meeting in Fayetteville, Ga., in early December, Keller looked out at a data center stretched across the landscape, glowing bright white.