Push to Make US Voters Love AI Gives Them New Cause to Fear It

From the White House to the statehouse, many US politicians who’ve been cheerleading the data-center boom are now trying to defuse a growing backlash ahead of midterm elections. But the plan they’ve hit on isn’t winning over the skeptics.

President Donald Trump and state governors like Pennsylvania Democrat Josh Shapiro are pushing the power-hungry AI facilities to buy or generate their own electricity. That’s meant to assuage concern among voters about rising utility bills. It might just be giving them something else to worry about instead.

Take the giant construction site at Homer City, 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of ...