Most Americans Say They Don't Want an AI Data Center Next Door, a New Survey Finds

AI has to live somewhere, and increasingly that somewhere is a data center: a large building full of computers that train and run the models behind tools like ChatGPT. A new survey suggests most Americans would rather those buildings not go up near their homes. According to a Redfin survey, 53 percent of US residents oppose the construction of an AI data center in their neighborhood, while only about 34 percent support it.

The details are telling. The survey, run by Ipsos in May and fielded to 4,000 people, found that house hunters worry about noise, traffic, and heavy water and electricity use, plus the effect a big industrial building has on the character of a neighborhood. Those concerns are not abstract: data centers can draw as much power as a small city and use large amounts of water for cooling. Opposition also splits sharply by age. Around 65 percent of baby boomers and 60 percent of Gen Xers oppose a nearby data center, compared with roughly 42 percent of Gen Z and 43 percent of millennials. Notably, people opposed data centers more than any other type of building Redfin asked about, more than new apartments (39 percent) or mixed-use developments (32 percent). Nearly three in five also said they believe AI advances will eliminate jobs and make homes harder to afford.

What is driving this? For years, AI progress was something that happened invisibly, on servers far away. Now the physical footprint is showing up in real communities, and with it a classic “not in my backyard” tension: people may like the technology while resisting its infrastructure next door. There is a real trade-off underneath the survey, though. In northern Virginia, one of the densest data-center regions in the world, taxes on all that computing equipment are helping fund a surge in local education spending, and are even nudging individual homeowners’ property-tax rates down. So the same buildings people resist can also quietly pay for schools and ease tax bills, which is exactly the kind of tension local governments are now wrestling with.

What this means for you: If you own a home or are house hunting, “is there a data center planned nearby?” is becoming a real question, with genuine arguments on both sides: possible noise and strain on local resources, but also possible tax revenue and lower rates. More broadly, this is a sign that AI’s costs are no longer just about chips and electricity bills for tech companies; they are starting to land in neighborhoods, budgets, and local politics, where the rest of us get a vote.

Sources

• Redfin: Most Americans say “not in my backyard” to AI data centers
• TheNextWeb: Americans oppose AI data centres more than any other building