Dutchess County Chamber of Commerce last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cAnd as we\u2019ve learned with social-media companies, they\u2019re not going to do the right thing themselves,\u201d said Conley, calling for more control over data center development when asked about the issue.<\/p>\n
A Siena University poll released last month shows only 29% of likely New York voters have a favorable opinion of AI compared with 52% unfavorable.<\/p>\n
Environmental activists have demanded state and federal lawmakers address data-center development \u2014 and the stance appears to be sticking with voters. Albany Times Union via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Younger voters between ages 18 and 35 are decidedly against the tech, with only 23% telling Siena they view it favorably, compared with a massive 71% who consider it unfavorable.<\/p>\n
But Blakeman, railing against Hochul\u2019s moratorium, has said such opposition is just another example of Democrats\u2019 anti-business sentiments.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo bury your head in the sand, with the fastest growing industry in the world, again, this is the reason why we\u2019re 50th in economic development,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the reason young people are moving out of our estate to places where there\u2019s more economic opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Blakeman, and other GOP reps aren\u2019t blind to voters\u2019 anxieties, either. <\/p>\n
Rep. Mike Lawler backs data centers \u2014 with limits. Vaughn Golden for NY Post<\/p>\n
He said the state needs to institute controls over energy usage and that local governments should exert power to extract public benefits from any new developments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not want AI to go offshore. We do want AI companies to be operating out of China, certainly not American companies,\u201d Lawler pointed out at the Duchess County forum last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we need to have a all-of-government approach to this. The federal government, state governments and local municipalities need to be working together collaboratively to address the concerns, to make sure that these large-scale data centers are not taking away power from the people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Josh Vlasto, one of the operatives heading Leading the Future, a super PAC supported by AI-firms, said he thinks anti-tech sentiments are being overblown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing on the data center debate, what you\u2019re seeing around AI, what we had previously seen on crypto, are really extreme voices trying to derail progress on policy,\u201d Vlasto said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American public just wants to harness the benefits of AI and have a smart policy to mitigate the downsides and the risks. To us, it\u2019s not that complicated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York GOP candidates are blazing forward with a pro-tech, pro-business message in the state\u2019s marquee November races…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1626,2053,426,57,46937,883,9,24,55,54,56,13895,58],"class_list":["post-339597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bruce-blakeman","tag-data-centers","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-metro","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-mike-lawler","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-ny-governor-election-2026","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}