Poll shows Americans are increasingly alarmed by AI’s ecological footprint
New poll finds over half of Americans fear AI-driven data centers will hike electricity costs and strain water supplies.
A new survey of adults in the United States finds that more than half worry about artificial intelligence’s environmental impact, up 12 percentage points from last year.
The poll, a joint effort by The Associated Press, the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute, indicated that Americans dread AI’s carbon footprint far more than high-emission giants like meat production and aviation.
Released on Wednesday, data from interviews with 3,424 US adults in August show that 53 per cent of Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts. The increased wariness marks an upward trend from the 41 percent recorded last year.
Despite bipartisan pushback, thousands of data centres already span the US, with extensive construction underway to meet escalating demand. The scope includes decades-old conventional facilities alongside massive and newly built hyperscale centres engineered for resource-intensive AI processing. While Virginia and Texas lead the nation in operating facilities, California, Ohio and New York follow behind closely as top digital infrastructure hubs.