People would rather have an Amazon warehouse in their backyard than a data center | TechCrunch

Last day to exhibit your breakthrough to 10,000+ tech leaders at Disrupt is on Oct 2. Book Exhibit Table Now. Disrupt doors open Oct. 13. Get your pass and bring someone with you at 50% off. REGISTER NOW. As data centers have grown and proliferated, so too has the backlash. A new Harvard/MIT poll found 40% of people supported the building of a data center in their area, with 32% opposed when asked about the building of different industrial facilities in their neighborhoods. One fun tidbit from the survey, per Axios: More people would rather have an e-commerce warehouse. Two-thirds of respondents in the 1,000-person poll conducted in November were worried that a new data center in their region would nudge electricity prices higher. Interest in jobs and economic growth helped the case for data centers, according to Axios — though that sentiment may fade as most data center projects don’t employ many people once they’re up and running. Another survey, conducted last month and published earlier this week by Quinnipiac University, found much more opposition to data center construction. That poll found 65% of Americans oppose building an AI data center in their community. Only 24% of the