From KQED.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

Pushback against data centers is intensifying in California and nationwide.

Monterey Park will vote this June on whether to ban all data center developments in the city,

one of multiple data center referendums on ballots across the U.S.

Another in the works in Imperial County is facing fierce community backlash.

This hour, we talk with a data center developer who says they create jobs and infrastructure

necessary for the AI boom and a lawmaker who wants more scrutiny on them.

But joining me first is Molly Taft, senior climate reporter at Wired.

Molly, welcome back to Forum.

Thanks so much for having me.

Happy to be here.

So data centers that power computing with banks of servers, they've been around for some time.

There's like some 300 in California alone.

But remind us, Molly, how these new data center developments for AI processing

are different. It's a great question. And you're right. Data centers have been around for many,

many years, especially in California. You know, a lot of folks might have been living up the street

from one and not really thought too much about it until very recently.

You know, as we're talking about the AI boom and that, the equipment and the infrastructure

that's needed to power these large language models especially and to, you know, complete the

aims of companies like Open AI, meta, that are all racing to develop more

AI. They're pretty different from some of the smaller data centers that, you know, have been built

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