AI Backlash

THE Merriam-Webster Dictionary named “slop” its word of the year for 2025, referencing AI-generated images and videos meant to drive traffic on social media and to websites. While that’s one of the less harmful results of access to AI, people are worried that the technology’s predominance will lead to the loss of human jobs, while also potentially impacting their physical comfort, health, and affordable cost of living. Arizona has become a new epicenter for the issue. As a result an AI backlash is well underway in the state.

Awareness is growing regarding the 160 proposed data centers in Arizona. People in general don’t entirely trust AI for research and writing, and are unhappy about being fooled by AI-generated text and videos that are not labeled as such. Another recent development, the potential tyranny of algorithmic pricing, has also elicited concerns from Arizonans.

Data centers sprang up across the country with no discussion of how placing them next to residential neighborhoods could negatively impact the people living there. It has since become well known that data centers make poor neighbors. They’re noisy, they pollute, they use a lot of water, and they will very likely raise the cost of electricity substantially for everyone because of their high demand. The data center for Elon Musk’s xAI, located in a Black neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee has drawn intense criticism for those reasons. The area was already polluted by 17 other industrial plants, but according to residents interviewed by Time magazine, Musk’s plant emits the scent of “rotten eggs.”

 Survey data from Datacentermap.com show that of 160 data centers planned for Arizona, 154 are sited in Maricopa County. That’s partly due to tax incentives, available land, lower costs for electricity and water compared with other states, and weaker zoning restrictions. Some residents are already firmly opposed.

Turning down data centers

At least 300 people who attended a Chandler City Council meeting led to a ‘no’ vote on a data center championed by former US Senator Kyrsten Sinema. A story in The Arizona Republic quotes residents citing potential future losses of jobs to AI, noise and potential increases in water and electricity rates in opposing it. When the center was voted down on December 11 at 10:30pm, those against it chanted, “Power to the people!”

Prior to that, The Arizona Republic reports that a proposed data center for Project Blue in Tucson drew more than a thousand people to a public meeting at the convention center. Some held signs referencing water-use concerns, such as, “Not One Drop for Data.” Many shouted and were angry about the $3.6-billion project that would support Amazon Web Services.

The center would be located on 290 acres of unincorporated land in Pima County, south of the city. If approved, the project would use more energy annually than every home in Tucson combined, as well as 1,910 acre-feet of water annually, about 6% of the city’s supply. The proposal includes annexing the land into the city before the project moves forward.

Data-center regulations in Phoenix

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said at a recent event that her city has passed an ordinance to require companies that want to build data centers to adhere to minimal regulations.

“One of my top priorities right now is commonsense policy around data centers,” Gallego said. “The US economy is basically flat right now except for AI, and there is a huge amount of money going into data centers. You’re seeing companies like Amazon laying off human beings and putting all the money into data centers and servers. Northern Virginia has the most, but we are one of the communities at the highest level of data centers. I am increasingly concerned about that, and that’s something I’ve done a lot of work on. The mayor of Melbourne, Australia and I co-founded a global mayor’s organization to try to make sure AI (companies) and these data centers are more responsible.’

“Excessively generous tax credits” are part of why data centers look to locate in Arizona, Gallego said. The tax credits reduce property, sales and income taxes for the companies operating them.

“So it hits us,” Gallego said. “Our schools need property tax. We’re giving that money away. These are the wealthiest companies in the world. We have Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. We have companies, household names like Meta and Google, so they can afford to pay taxes in Arizona. Many of them use fossil fuels for their power, so the water use isn’t necessarily at the highest at the data center, but they use so much electricity, and that takes a ton of water that I feel should go to job creators. Data centers are wonderful construction projects, but they’re not good for long-term jobs. They just are farms of servers that use a ton of electricity. So I would like us to be very, very intentional about that. I would like us to roll back (projects) and make them pay their fair share of taxes.”

Recently the City of Phoenix unanimously passed an ordinance to put location constraints on data centers.

“They are going in anywhere there’s electricity, and so it’s been right up against housing, and the noise is frustrating to many people, particularly people who are noise-sensitive. They devalue your property if you have a giant substation next to you and you’re a homeowner. So we’ve had retirees call and say ‘I put all my wealth in my house, and now there’s a giant substation. Will the City of Phoenix pay me for my lost value?’ The idea that international private equity funds are not paying these folks what they want, and they think it has to come from us, has also been a frustration. So we’re trying to require reasonable landscaping and some distance from homes so people can sleep.”

Gallego said the Republican candidate for attorney general wants to prevent any regulations on data centers, so that they can locate anywhere they want. She disagrees and says she’d even like to see state regulations. If the Republican-controlled Legislature would consider passing them, Governor Katie Hobbs has already said she would sign a bill.

“They (data centers) are way larger than they used to be,” Gallego said. “They’re now big industrial sites, many of them have their own onsite power, and so they ought to go in industrial areas, not next to people’s homes.”

Utility rates are already climbing. The New Yorker reports, “American utilities sought almost thirty billion dollars in retail rate increases in the first half of 2025.” Bloomberg produced a major report on utility rates and found that “wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near consumers.”

Instacart’s algorithm-pricing experiment

Recently Consumer Reports, More Perfect Union and Groundwork Collaborative conducted a study on Instacart charges and found that the company that provides shopping services in most grocery stores was charging different prices in an “experiment” primarily conducted in four cities in the DC area. The same dozen eggs, for instance, was sold for five different prices.

Consumer Reports surveyed 2,240 adults in September, and 72% who used Instacart in the previous year didn’t want the company to charge different users different prices for any reason. They view the idea as manipulative and unfair. US Senator Ruben Gallego introduced a bill called the One Fair Price Act to prevent companies like Instacart from using “surveillance” pricing. As we go to press we’re hearing that Instacart has stopped the experiment in response to the publicity.

General mayhem

The social-media site X has used bots from around the world for political rage-baiting about US politics, something that calls into question what’s real opinion and what’s not. Movies, advertising and other media have used AI programs to generate content, sometimes with embarrassing results, such as an entertainment story that suggested books for summer reading that don’t exist. Political deepfake ads are also problematic and aggravate public distrust of media in general.

Till the law requires labeling on AI content, users are left to contend with ineffective state laws, platform policies and ethical guidelines that companies may not adhere to. The current administration has been taking a hands-off policy toward AI, and attempted to prevent states from passing any laws to restrict it.

US Senator Bernie Sanders recently announced that he plans to introduce a bill to regulate data centers, but unless Republicans go against the Trump edict to prevent AI regulation, the bill is doomed to fail.

In the meantime users must go to fact-checking sites and consult legitimate, established media outlets for reliable information, and are advised to be skeptical if something on the internet seems too strange to be real.

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