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Delsia Bare and her mother, Ida Huddleston, agreed to sell their Kentucky farmland to an unnamed company for $26.48 million. Then they found out it was for a 2.2-gigawatt AI data center.
That was the deal breaker, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bare said she believes AI could be “the destruction of the human race” and sees staying on her land as a biblical duty. Huddleston was put off by the NDA clause of the contract and simply didn’t want to leave the routine of her daily life. “Even if I had $26 million, I’d want to sit here in my chair, and have my coffee and eat my food where I always do,” she said.
Bare, 54, is legally nearly blind from diabetes. Huddleston is 83 and walks with a cane. “One of us is blind and the other’s cripple,” Huddleston said. They call themselves “country hicks” and have become polarizing figures in the pushback against AI’s expansion into small towns.
Their refusal to take the deal has split their hometown of Maysville, population 8,700. Neighbors have sued neighbors. Facebook groups have turned hostile. The company, later identified through public records as likely Meta, has offered the town $110 million in land deals, plus funding for emergency services and water infrastructure. A Meta spokesman said no decision has been made.