From Miscarriages To Judgement Day: We Took A Look At All The AI Takes The Internet Has To Offer

Artificial intelligence has sparked widespread concern on the web about its potential effects on society — though the evidence for some of the most alarming predictions remains less certain.

Opposition to AI and data centers has become increasingly popular, with 61% of Americans answering “strongly oppose” when asked if they would support data center construction where they live, according to a Heatmap News poll shared on X. Americans were roughly twice as willing to accept a coal plant in their community as they were a data center, the same poll found.

Critics of these AI projects claim data centers consume too much energy and water and will eliminate jobs across the country, but some experts disagree.

‘Putting Mercury And Lead And Cadmium Over Your Aquifers’

Americans opposed to data centers fear the projects harm their water and local environment.

“[W]hen you go to thinking about these data centers coming in, [they are] putting mercury and lead and cadmium over your aquifers, needing to consume large amounts of water, raising the temperatures in your community, vibrating at a low frequency that can bring up cortisol levels in the human body [and] cause miscarriages and other things to go wrong,” a Kentucky farmer told CNN, according to an Aug. 19 X post.

“Data centers are a cancer on the earth and the country. They overtake farm land, drain aquifers and emit awful noise pollution, take away habitat from wild life,” another X post critical of data centers read.

Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, is advocating against data centers allegedly draining power and water as part of his campaign.

“Data centers shouldn’t drain our power and water, or hide deals from residents. Communities deserve transparency,” Warner, who is seeking a fourth term in November, said in an X post.

Virginia — particularly the northern part of the state — is the world’s largest data center market, according to US Data Center Map.

Northern Virginia has recently seen massive protests against data centers, with some supposedly connected to the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).

Energy policy experts say data centers only use a small fraction of U.S. water supply.

“[T]he water argument often lacks any sense of proportion. Agriculture, manufacturing, power generation, food processing and countless other industries use water, yet no one concludes that economic activity itself must stop,” American Energy Leadership Institute president Chris Johnson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“AI data centers account for a small share of overall water use, and much of their demand can be addressed through recycled water, closed-loop cooling, air cooling and sensible siting,” he added.

Johnson said that water constraints should be handled locally and AI’s alleged effects on water are nothing but “an artificial national crisis.”

‘Folks Feel Constantly Annoyed’

Local communities are concerned data centers will increase their power bills and affect their physical health.

“[The] NY grid is strained; high demand could raise power bill[s],” IPostNews reporter J. Dale Shoemaker wrote in an Aug. 19 post to X, in reference to an April Town of Alabama Fire Hall meeting in Genesee County, New York.

“Everywhere that they build data centers, folks feel constantly annoyed. They get frequent headaches, ringing in ears … it even raises blood pressure and causes heart disease,” Dr. Kirk Scirto, a Buffalo, NY, physician claimed at the fire hall, InvestigativePost reported.

Data center energy consumption concerns are echoed by Democrats in the Senate.

“[T]ech companies are passing on the costs of building and operating their data centers to ordinary Americans as AI data centers’ energy usage has caused residential electricity bills to skyrocket in nearby communities,” Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said in one of several letters to data center companies.

The letter went on to argue for data centers to “pay a greater share of the costs upfront” for their future energy use.

Meanwhile, experts rejected the idea that data centers are the cause of increasing electricity prices.

“The premise on electricity rates is backwards. AI data centers are large customers, and large, predictable demand can justify new generation and transmission infrastructure at a scale that lowers unit costs for everyone,” Johnson told the DCNF.

American electricity bills are threatened more by blocking new power supply than by rising demand itself, he argued.

“Build power quickly, connect it to the grid and site facilities responsibly, and AI can strengthen the system while driving electricity rates down over time,” Johnson told the DCNF.

Data Centers account for roughly four to five percent of electricity consumption in the U.S., which could increase to upwards of 17 percent by 2030, according to a Feb. 26 Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) press release.

These electricity usage increases will vary by state, the EPRI press release said. Eight states may potentially increase their usage at least 20 percent due to data center demand: Virginia, Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming.

‘AI Is Taking All Of Your Jobs’

Americans also worry that AI and data centers will eliminate their jobs.

“[AI] is taking all of your jobs. It’s not that you can’t make money. It’s that you have to re-engineer how you think about everything,” a speaker said in a video circulated on X. “Sorry, it’s the timeline you’re in.”

“That’s because the data centers seem to be swallowing up all of the labor force by paying $100,000 to $250,000 a year to get these data centers built,” Democratic Virginia State Sen. L. Louise Lucas said at an Aug. 19 legislative hearing, Washington Free Beacon reported. “So, where are the employees to help with our residential construction sites and things like that?”

Meanwhile, advocacy groups say, instead, that data centers create jobs.

“Data centers create tons of jobs [and] are ‘the gasoline of the technology revolution’ that America needs to win,” Innovation Council said in an X post.

Data center advocates believe the AI industry will create more jobs.

“The facts show that AI is actually powering a surge in jobs, particularly for electricians. Like other technological revolutions before it, AI will make workers more productive and create jobs,” former Republican Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, co-chair of the AI Infrastructure Coalition, told the DCNF.

The data center industry supported 4.7 million total jobs across the U.S. in 2023, an increase from 2.9 million in 2017, according to a Feb. 2025 PwC study for the Data Center Coalition.

Researchers say these efforts in local communities look much smaller.

Approximately 2,000 to 4,000 additional private-sector jobs are created roughly six years after a local county installs its first large data center, according to Brookings.

‘This Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory’

At the far end of the spectrum, the Internet concluded AI would end humanity outright.

“We’re getting closer and closer to Skynet. And I’m sure markets will love it,” one X user posted July 21 in response to OpenAI‘s models hacking AI startup Hugging Face in July.

Skynet is a U.S. military AI that becomes self-aware and launches a nuclear event to wipe out humanity, an event the Terminator films called ‘Judgement Day.’

“THIS ISN’T A MOVIE, SKYNET IS HERE. THIS ISN’T A CONSPIRACY THEORY,” another X user said in a July 23 post, responding to FOX News coverage of the Hugging Face hacking incident.

These end-of-the-world ideas are not confined to X accounts. More than 1,000 experts signed a Future of Life Institute open letter calling for a six-month “pause” on advanced AI development in March 2023.

One AI theorist, Eliezer Yudkowsky, went a step further when he argued that government should “be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike” to stop large uncontrolled AI development, according to a March 2023 TIME essay.

In May 2023, hundreds of researchers and executives signed a Center for AI Safety statement that read, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”