AI Data Centers Face ‘Discrimination’ as Backlash Over Costs and Rights Grows

In 2016, Marco Gutiérrez, the Mexican-born founder of Latinos for Trump, warned that immigrant culture was imposing and causing problems, saying, “If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”

A decade later, columnist Arwa Mahdawi issues a similar warning: AI culture is now imposing and causing problems, and if unchecked, “we’re going to have datacenters on every corner.”

Datacenters—physical facilities housing servers and storage systems—are critical to the internet; their disappearance would collapse banking systems and streaming services, she notes.

But the AI boom has massively expanded their footprint and driven up utility bills. The New Yorker reported last year that when a datacenter comes online, retail customers often foot the electric bill, with utilities seeking nearly $30 billion in rate increases in the first half of 2025.

Bloomberg reported a study showing power prices on the largest US electric grid jumped 76% in the first quarter due to datacenter demand. Datacenters currently consume 6% of electricity in the UK and US, potentially exceeding 14% of US demand by 2030.

Beyond costs, AI datacenters are noisy, emit pollution harmful to community health, and divert resources. In Fayetteville, Georgia, residents discovered a datacenter had taken 30 million gallons of water, initially without payment.

A Gallup poll found seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing AI datacenters in their local area, with most preferring to live near a nuclear power plant.

Those profiting from AI appear unconcerned. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, asked by podcaster Theo Von about datacenter size, said, “I do guess a lot of the world gets covered in datacenters over time… we’re stumbling through this.”

Mahdawi notes that while the industry stumbles, regular people get hurt.

As backlash grows, industry figures like venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary have claimed protesters are paid agitators. In a video on X, O’Leary said, “There are professional protesters that are paid by somebody, I don’t know who.”

More troublingly, discussions about AI legal personhood and datacenter rights are emerging. The University of Michigan’s plan for a $1.2 billion nuclear weapons research and AI datacenter in Ypsilanti Township faced a moratorium on water and sewer services. The university claimed the moratorium was “pretextual and unlawfully discriminatory because it singles out ‘data centers’ by label rather than by utility impact.”

Legal experts expect more debate on datacenter rights, given the history of corporate personhood in US law. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling (2010) affirmed corporate political speech, and the Hobby Lobby ruling (2014) allowed corporate religious exemptions. The 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis decision (2023) upheld a business’s free speech right to refuse service to same-sex couples.

The Brennan Center for Justice said of the Hobby Lobby judgment, “Today the Supreme Court once again advanced the personhood rights of some corporations to the detriment of actual human beings.” It expressed concern about the trend of corporations asserting human rights while injuring actual people.

Mahdawi observes that corporations seem to have more free speech than university students, and datacenters may soon have more rights than women.

A bill making it illegal for anyone under 18 to marry passed with minimal opposition, though a Republican lawmaker in New Hampshire previously said such a bill would make abortion “much more desirable” for people of “ripe, fertile age.”

Mahdawi highlights a haunting photo of 78-year-old Aisha and 41-year-old Huda Al-Aqqad, a mother and daughter abducted from Gaza. A grinning Israeli soldier posted the image. Sky News identified the women but found no answers from the Israeli military about their fate or alleged sexual torture.

While some abortion rights news is encouraging, Mahdawi warns against complacency, as anti-abortion extremists continue to try to outlaw abortion pills nationwide.

The Guardian published a piece on men who feel emasculated by shifting gender roles, with Mahdawi drawing a parallel to the Love is Blind reality show, where a man reacted hostilely to his partner’s success.

During her Emmy win, Hacks star Jean Einbinder said, “Go birds, fuck ICE, free Palestine.” In a new interview, Einbinder said she will continue to be vocal about Palestine, calling out Hollywood’s silence on Gaza.

The Guardian also published a historian’s piece on why attitudes toward Gaza have changed.

A Canadian fox was caught stealing hotdogs; police apprehended it but let it go. Mahdawi quips, “I don’t know if justice was served, but dinner certainly was.”