Sam Altman Acknowledges Growing Backlash Against AI Data Centers

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged growing public opposition to data centers and artificial intelligence as the company continues its aggressive expansion of AI infrastructure.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledges growing public opposition to data centers as the company continues expanding its AI infrastructure. [Photo: Steve Jurvetson]

Earlier this year, shots were fired and an incendiary device was thrown at Altman’s home, Jess Kinghorn reported for PC Gamer. 

Reflecting on the past year in an interview with Time, Altman said: “It has been a painful personal experience. Clearly, people hate data centers—right now, at least. People are pretty negative on AI.” 

Despite the backlash, OpenAI's infrastructure expansion is continuing.

The company plans to spend another $50 billion this year on compute, according to the report. Sachin Katti, who co-leads OpenAI's compute strategy, told Time that the company's earlier investments now appear “very prescient.”

“We are still short of compute. If anything, we should have bought a lot more,” Katti said.

If OpenAI's own AI products do not use all of the computing capacity it is building, renting that capacity to other customers could provide another source of revenue.

Altman told Time: “I think we are going to be able to use all of the compute very profitably that we are planning to build.”

The expansion nevertheless raises questions about where new AI data centers can be built as communities increasingly challenge their environmental and infrastructure impacts.

In Wisconsin, residents have filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft alleging “unreasonable and excessive noise” from a data center.