Mitchell Hartman

I'm really scared.

What's happened to young people over the past 15 years is...

is scary enough, and then adding this technology to the conversation is really frightening.

The tech industry is racing toward a future that doesn't sound great to a lot of people.

Recent data from the Pew Research Center show Americans are much more concerned than excited about AI.

And in communities across the country, data centers have become a lightning rod.

Local opposition has already shut down dozens of projects.

Residents in Hobart, Indiana, outside Chicago, have been protesting a proposed Amazon AI data center for months.

I got in touch with a couple of the organizers.

Angelita Soriano lives across the street from the 700-acre site, and Barbara Koteles lives about a quarter mile away.

They've been distributing yard signs, going door-to-door, even sponsored a billboard at a busy intersection in town.

They worry about noise, pollution, traffic, declining property values, and strain on the power grid.

Electricity prices in the area have already gone up an average of 26 percent in the last year, and they doubt the benefits of AI will make up for it.

the ai is on there you can't even opt out of it it's like what do you do just stop using your phone no just go back to what a year ago when you just did a regular search how hard is that that's what we can do in early january after an hour and a half of public comment universally opposing the amazon data center the hobart city council voted to move forward with the plan

which includes a $47 million payment to the city and a promise to cover the additional energy infrastructure it would need.

Big tech has some pretty big trust issues to work through with Americans after the social media era.

And it sure doesn't seem like the industry is trying too hard to disabuse consumers of their fears.

Whether they're hyping products to investors or earnestly concerned, we've heard leaders speculate about AI obliterating jobs, substituting for relationships, or wiping out human civilization.

Spencer Kaplan is an anthropology PhD candidate at Yale who studies the culture of the AI industry, which he says is more philosophical than other corners of tech.

Many researchers are deep into intellectual movements that prize reasoning out loud about big existential questions, like how to save the species from rogue AI.