More than 70% of Americans oppose the construction of AI data centers in their local areas, according to a recent Gallup survey. Just 7% of respondents said they were "strongly" in favor of new data centers being built nearby.
Gallup’s findings highlight the extent of public opposition: Americans would prefer to live near a nuclear power plant than an AI data center. Even at its peak, opposition to nuclear power plant construction never exceeded 63%.
The data is based on two surveys conducted in March 2026 and April 2026. The first survey polled 1,000 randomly selected American adults across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The second survey included 2,054 adults who are members of the Gallup Panel.
Related articles
OpenAI keeps shuffling its executives in bid to win AI agent battle
OpenAI announced yet another reorganization Friday, consolidating certain areas and making company president Greg Brockman the official lead of all th...
AI radio hosts demonstrate why AI can’t be trusted alone
AI radio DJs demonstrated their volatile personalities. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Andon Labs has been running a series of exper...
Google updates its spam rules to include attempts to ‘manipulate’ AI
Google updated its spam policy to mark attempts to "manipulate" its AI model in search results as spam, including results in AI Overview or AI Mode in...
Engadget Podcast: Who needs Googlebooks?
We also dive into all the new features in Android 17.
Pennsylvanians use town hall meeting to rail against data center boom
The latest example of burgeoning opposition to rapid data-center development in Pennsylvania came at a town hall meeting overflowing with frustration...
The UK's tax authority is turning to AI to help identify fraud
Human staff members will still check the AI's findings.
AI research papers are getting better, and it’s a big problem for scientists
Last summer, Peter Degen's postdoctoral supervisor came to him with an unusual problem: One of his papers was being cited too much. Citations are the...
Claude Code's product lead talks usage limits, transparency, and the "lean harness"
SAN FRANCISCO—Amid an ever-expanding array of surfaces, growing demand for tokens and compute, and a rapidly evolving user base, Anthropic doesn't hav...