The data center thing is a complete red herring. Of course you wouldn't want a data center literally next to your house. Neither would you want to live next to a manufacturing plant making automobiles or batteries or solar panels. This doesn't mean we should want to outlaw manufacturing plants.

The complaints about water consumption are even worse. Nationally, the amount of water consumed by golf courses is orders of magnitude larger than the water consumed by data centers.

I say this not to defend OpenAI or Sam Altman. I say this because I want the focus to be on the real dangers posed by AI:

* Power consumption (mitigated by building more power generation capacity, but this is a real impact, and there are legitimate environmental concerns)

* The disruption AI will have on people's careers and livelihoods

* The concentration of political power in the hands of a small cadre of billionaires

* The potential for truly dangerous destructive power if used by malicious groups - eg. bio-terrorism.

We should be concerned about the "bad things" posed by AI. A data center next to your house is very much a local issue, not a national issue.