Dorothy

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a potential Democratic presidential contender in 2028, recently signed an executive order restricting data center development in the state, taking a stand against what he called “predatory” developers.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul in July issued a first-of-its-kind moratorium on large-scale data center construction – though it has drawn backlash from AI supporters who warn the ban could quash construction jobs. Other critics fear the regulation isn’t strict enough.

Anthropic is pulling ahead of OpenAI in the frontier model race, laying the foundations for a new hierarchy of dominance within the rapidly developing artificial intelligence sector. From the first to the second quarter, Anthropic more than doubled its revenue while OpenAI's increased by just 18%, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. OpenAI's operating margins, which were already in the red, also sank lower – a bad sign ahead of a hotly anticipated initial public offering. Meanwhile, Anthropic is projecting as much as $200 billion in 2028 revenue, far exceeding the $47 billion revenue run rate that the company publicized in May, Reuters reported last week.

Social media users who oppose data centers have cited environmental issues, noise and light pollution and economic concerns, like the potential for the new tech to eradicate many jobs.

A poll released in June by Echelon Insights found that only 27% of Americans said they would want an AI data center built in their nieghborhood, with 62% opposed. This made data centers even less popular than nuclear power plants, which 34% of Americans said they would welcome in their neighborhoods.