New York passes a one-year moratorium on AI data centers

But there is some good news. As Wired reported yesterday, New York just passed a moratorium on building AI data centers for one year. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the act yesterday, making New York the first state to pass a statewide moratorium on the issue; the Maine state legislature passed a similar bill in April, but Democratic governor Janet Mills vetoed that bill in defense of one particular data center. (Construction of that center has since been put on indefinite hold anyway.)  Several states have also introduced similar bills, including Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Virginia, though several of those have already failed.

Still, the moratorium in New York doesn’t go quite as far as some advocates would like. Last month, the New York state legislature passed a moratorium on data centers operating at over 20 megawatts, while the order signed by Kathy Hochul extends only to centers operating at over 50 megawatts. But it’s undeniably a start, and one that has AI advocates spooked. As one lobbyist told Politico, “I wouldn’t call it panic, but the concern is real and it moved fast… The real worry in the industry isn’t New York specifically, it is the precedent.” Another admitted that the public opinion on data centers is “devastating” and said, “If the industry doesn’t wake up quick and start solving this, it’s going to get a lot worse.” Maybe one option would be to stop building super loud and dirty data centers, especially behind people’s houses.