GoKawiil53% of Americans are ‘extremely’ concerned about the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence. On the way home from a recent trip, Eriech Tapia drove past a sea of dark industrial buildings lining an already jam-packed northern Virginia road: data centers.“It was interesting to see how many were going up,” said Tapia, a 30-year-old Republican from Arlington, Virginia, who works in higher education advocacy and policy. He said the data centers lend valuable computing power that can help keep the U.S. competitive with other nations, but he also worries about how much electricity they use.Like Tapia, Americans have grown more concerned about the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence over the last year, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.The survey data say about half, 53%, of Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts. That is up from 41% last year. Democrats are driving much of the increase in environmental concern, but the poll also reveals broader worries about the local impact of data centers, which power AI and cloud computing.“We’re undertaking a massive experiment in real time, and I don’t think there’ll be any putting the milk back in the bottle. Change is scary, and I think some of that is being reflected here,” said Michael Greenstone, who directs the University of Chicago institute that collaborated on the survey.
How concerned are Americans about AI’s environmental impact? This new poll reveals the data
Why This Matters
A new AP-NORC poll shows that a majority of Americans—53%—are now extremely or very concerned about AI's environmental footprint, up sharply from 41% last year. This growing unease, especially among Democrats, reflects real-world anxieties as data centers proliferate and consume massive amounts of electricity, potentially shaping public policy debates and industry practices around AI infrastructure and energy use.
Key Takeaways
- Public concern over AI's environmental impact rose from 41% to 53% in one year, according to AP-NORC/University of Chicago polling.
- The increase in concern is largely driven by Democrats, though broader worries about local data center impacts span the political spectrum.
- Rapid data center construction, like that seen in northern Virginia, is fueling public awareness of AI's electricity demands and environmental tradeoffs.
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artificial intelligence
data centers
environmental impact
energy consumption
ap-norc poll
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