Poll: 55% of Americans Say AI Will Do More Harm Than Good, 65% Oppose Data Centers in Their Communities

Fifty-five percent of Americans believe artificial intelligence will do more harm than good in their day-to-day lives, while 65 percent oppose the construction of data centers in their communities, according to a Quinnipiac University poll reported by Bloomberg on Monday. The numbers represent a significant undercurrent of skepticism toward AI at a moment when the technology is drawing record investment and deployment across virtually every industry. The opposition to local data center construction is particularly notable given the scale of infrastructure buildout currently underway, with hyperscale facilities planned or under construction across the United States. Data center development has emerged as a local political issue in communities from Northern Virginia to rural Texas, where residents have raised concerns about power consumption, water usage for cooling systems, noise, and the permanent transformation of land that could otherwise serve agricultural or residential purposes. Some counties have enacted moratoriums on new data center permitting. The poll results align with a broader pattern of public ambivalence about AI that has persisted even as consumer adoption of tools like ChatGPT has grown rapidly. Previous surveys have found that while people use AI tools at increasing rates, many simultaneously express concerns about job displacement, misinformation, privacy, and loss of human oversight in consequential decisions. The Quinnipiac findings come as AI companies and the Trump administration have framed AI investment as a national security and economic competitiveness imperative. The public opinion data suggests that framing has not fully resonated with a majority of Americans. Sample size and methodology details for the Quinnipiac poll were not specified in initial reports.