Jasmine Sun on What the AI Industry Got Wrong About the Public Backlash
Jasmine Sun, reporting for her Substack after a road trip through data-center sites in Michigan and Wisconsin, argues the AI industry misjudged where public backlash would land: not on job-loss or x-risk fears, but on trust — communities don't believe hyperscalers' promises on jobs, taxes, or water use, and that distrust, not information gaps, drives roughly 70/30 opposition in polling regardless of whether a data center is nearby. No new investment calls, but the piece is a live risk map for buildout: deal terms have flipped from towns subsidizing hyperscalers (2023-24) to hyperscalers now expected to pay upfront, NDAs are being dropped as toxic, and small towns face real power asymmetries against companies like OpenAI and Oracle in fights like Saline, Michigan (population under 3,000, sued over zoning after its council voted no).
This is the super-short version — click for the full summary →