Kevin O'Leary says opponents of his Utah data center are 'professional protesters' — and some are powered by AI

from Business Insider

O'Leary is dismissing critics of the multibillion-dollar project as "professional protesters" and suggesting some of the opposition is being amplified by artificial intelligence.

In a post on X and an accompanying video, O'Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful, said concerns about the project — including its impact on air, water use, heat, and noise — are well understood by his team.

"I'm actually the only developer of data centers on earth that graduated from environmental studies, so I'm pretty aware of what these concerns are," he said in the clip, posted Tuesday. 

The Box Elder County data center is facing pushback from those worried about environmental strain and resource use, a common flash point as energy-hungry data centers fueling the growth of AI expand across the US...

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‘Shame! Shame! Shame!’: Local Residents Furious After Shark Tank Billionaire’s Data Center Approved in Utah

(You pay for their football stadiums. You pay for their hockey arenas. You pay for their tax breaks. And if you are in the military, sometimes you pay for their expansionist imperial ambitions with your lives. So today the masters of the universe can't figure out why you balk at paying for their water and electric bill when they want to make a shit-ton of money commodifying your personal data and spying on you. Don't you know your place in the brave new techno-feudal state they are building for us? Luddite.)

from Common Dreams

County commissioners in Box Elder County, Utah, were deluged with chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” from a crowd of hundreds on Monday night as they voted unanimously to move forward with a sprawling “hyperscale” artificial intelligence data center project that many residents fear will cause energy prices to soar and imperil water access.

The project, known by state officials as “Stratos,” was proposed by the celebrity venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary and has been rushed along by Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, which recently approved a gigantic energy tax break for the program to help “lure” the billionaire “Shark Tank” investor.

The development, dubbed “Wonder Valley” after O’Leary’s “Mr. Wonderful” TV persona, would span more than 40,000 acres of northern Utah—more than two and a half times the size of Manhattan—and would consume more than twice the electricity currently used by the entire state if approved, according to Axios.