Clouded Leopards, Data Centers, Oh My!
Clouded Leopards are the latest (adorable) poster children of the AI resistance. National publications like People Magazine and the NY Times are covering the opposition to a proposed data center next to the Nashville Zoo as local celebrities highlight the issue, over half a million people sign petitions, and the Nashville mayor files eminent domain in an effort to stop the development.
The data center and broader AI backlash have become one of the few issues that the American public actually agrees on. A recent Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans oppose a data center being constructed in their area. People cite environmental impacts, sure, but we have a pretty poor record when it comes to standing up for our environment.¹ This feels like one of the only ways people can actually fight the rising tide of AI. Country star Brad Paisley,² who has become the unofficial spokesperson for the zoo, even called this out himself in his latest Instagram post. "AI is taking our intellectual property without asking us…and now they're trying to build a data center, a monstrosity, next to the zoo kind of in the same way."
Just ask Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson,³ suburban NIMBYers know how to stop real estate development in their communities. While you can't picket a model, a data center is a building, with a permit and neighbors, and this particular one happens to sit conveniently next to a skittish pair of clouded leopards. For the first time, the vague unease people have about AI gives them something concrete to fight against. You can’t sign a petition to just stop an AI strategy, but you can sign one on behalf of cuddly, clouded leopards. For those who spend most of their time in SF (or on tech Twitter), this forceful backlash is surprising. For those who spend time anywhere else, it shouldn't be, because the industry's audience has been narrow from the start. When Google launched, the story wasn't "we're going to organize and monetize the world's information." It was two Stanford kids in a garage who wanted to help you find stuff, your directions, the medical question you were too embarrassed to ask a doctor. Everyone could see themselves as a beneficiary.
The AI industry forgot that lesson, and went straight to the sales pitch – technology that would leapfrog human potential and reimagine how we work, connect with others and live our lives. We’re living at the dawn of the new Industrial Revolution – get ahead or get left behind!
When you’re used to speaking to a room of “early adopters” this message works. We’re excited by the technological breakthroughs, thrilled by the relentlessly positive feedback we get from our personalized LLMs and volunteer the new guy, Claude, to handle all the minutia that we no longer want to concern ourselves with. As much as the only child in me still believes I am the only audience that matters, there’s a lot more people who fear getting left behind. And when your technology promises to transform the world, your audience then becomes everybody. While data centers may never be popular, over half a million people wouldn’t be rallying in defense of a zoo if they didn’t feel like a pair of skittish clouded leopards who need peace and quiet to breed to save their species was a potential harbinger of what was going to come for them.
If the industry wants people to rally around a story the way they did over a leopard species nobody knew existed a week prior, it probably needs to give them something worth fighting for. Not "AI will transform the economy," but something closer to a three-day workweek, time with their family and friends, a renaissance of ceramics and ironic needlepoint, and a cure for cancer.
A new neighbor who can offer all that may be worth welcoming.
¹ The same poll asked about nuclear power plant construction, which only half of Americans opposed. (Also, this recent fight is also taking place in the home of country music, where roughly, 1 in 10 songs reference a pickup truck, which are not known for their mpg efficiency.)
² One of Paisley's biggest hits is “Mud on the Tires.”
³ Liberal darlings and author of “Abundance.”
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