Data centers don't have a great reputation among the public. Amazon is making a new move to fix that.

On Friday, Amazon announced "Built Together," an investment framework for building and running data centers in communities in response to the growing public backlash against these facilities. The initiative includes a $1 billion investment over the next five years to fund education, job training, energy affordability, and water preservation in the communities where its data centers exist.

Amazon's plan to appease these communities includes three central pillars:

• Creating education and workforce opportunities by investing in free community college and "hands-on" training for residents in its data center communities. The company is specifically funding associate degrees in "high-demand" fields, including electricians, HVAC experts, fiber opticians, IT, healthcare, education, public safety, and advanced manufacturing.
• Ensuring affordable energy and clean water solutions by creating grants for energy efficiency upgrades to K–12 schools, community buildings and homes in these communities, covering the costs to install heat pumps, HVAC systems, insulation, water heaters, batteries and solar installations, reducing energy costs by up to 40%.
• Funding local-specific, high-priority investments with "communities in the lead," such as affordable housing, food security, disaster preparedness, or whatever specific needs each individual community has.

In the announcement, Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, cast doubt on a number of common narratives around data centers, including that they use excessive water, drive up energy rates, emit large amounts of pollution and bring nothing to communities. He rejected the data center moratoriums that are up for consideration in a number of states, put forth by politicians from both sides of the aisle, which aim to clamp down on the AI infrastructure buildout due to strain on the energy grid and environmental impacts.

Garman said that, if enacted, "The US could be writing its own losing ticket to this [AI] race, and the consequences would last generations. As a country, we can’t afford to find ourselves in that position."

However, in defending data centers, Amazon will have to fix a behemoth of a PR problem. These facilities are largely reviled, with one poll from Gallup showing that an average of 7 in 10 Americans oppose them being built in their communities. Additionally, these facilities have also become a scapegoat for broader anxiety and fear around AI, creating a rallying point that extends across political parties or ideological differences.

Our Deeper View

Amazon has a lot riding on rehabilitating the image that data centers have in the public eye. The company has long been a kingpin in the cloud space, with AWS representing roughly a third of the global cloud services market share. The AI buildout has only raised the stakes, exacerbating the need for a rapid buildout into communities that are wary at best, and deeply, loudly opposed in many cases. Though this initiative aims to help appease these mistrustful communities, Amazon may have another factor to contend with: The ever-growing AI doomerist narrative. With many of AI's leaders claiming that the tech could trigger catastrophic risks that decimate national security and put lives at risk, those ideas have permeated the zeitgeist and struck fear into a public that's already underinformed about the technology. That alarmism could undermine Amazon's mission, no matter how many free HVACs it funds.