SAN FRANCISCO — As food delivery workers on e-scooters whizzed past a hulking tour bus parked next to Anthropic’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco on Monday afternoon, software engineers returning from their lunch breaks snapped pictures of a brash slogan bursting out of the bus’ idyllic Americana artwork of farmhouses and fields of grain.
“AI Data Center Revolt,” the bus’ detailed wrapping declared, proclaiming its mission to rally communities against wanton data center construction efforts across the country.
The bus and its small crew of conservative activists from a group called Humans First had just completed an over 8,000-mile whistle-stop marathon of a road trip on perhaps the most uniting theme today: anti-data-center sentiment.
“This technology is being shoved down people’s throats,” said Amy Kremer, chair of Humans First, admiring the bus’ artwork from a nearby sidewalk. She said the group aimed to push back against AI giants and their assumption that they can build billions of dollars of AI infrastructure without residents’ input. “That’s not the American way,” she said.
Founded this year as a coalition of left- and right-wing activists who worry that the rush to embrace AI is being spearheaded by tech oligarchs steamrolling Americans’ ability to steer the technology, Humans First has since morphed into a conservative-only effort led by Kremer to advocate for better guardrails on data center construction and AI in general.
Kremer, a veteran conservative organizer who played noted roles in the tea party and the organization that helped create the rally preceding the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, has spearheaded cross-country bus trips to extol MAGA talking points and deny the outcome of the 2020 election. Composed of Kremer, her husband, her daughter and her dog, Lovie — “He’s been with me the entire trip,” Kremer said — along with staffers and security guards, the Humans First squad has made more than 35 stops in communities across the country over the past five weeks.
The trip culminated in Monday’s visits to Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia — widely regarded as the world’s largest and most influential AI companies. Kremer and her daughter, Kylie Jane Kremer, fielded questions from reporters about the tour’s goals and its accomplishments.
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“I want Big Tech to actually include the American people and allow them to have a seat at the table,” said Kylie Jane, a senior adviser at Humans First. She highlighted the organization’s Data Center Policy, a 13-point charter that emphasizes community control over data center planning, rejects data centers’ role in increasing electricity prices and decries any use of American data centers for unconstitutional surveillance, among other issues.
“We’re not anti-AI, we’re not anti-tech, we’re not even anti-data center,” Kylie Jane said. Instead, the team touts a proud populist message: AI development must prioritize Americans, and the historic infrastructure buildout must benefit the communities hosting data centers humming with billions of dollars of business.
Yet, during the monthlong tour, much of the nation’s AI discourse shifted dramatically from worries about data centers’ guzzling water to fears that the technology might wipe out billions of people — or the entire species — in the next decade. Recent worries about such risks were catalyzed by former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon’s warning on X that leading AI companies are recklessly speeding toward technological disaster.
Amy Kremer said AI’s potential existential threats had clearly struck a nerve with Middle America, with growing numbers of people at Humans First rallies bringing up AI’s risks to society beyond immediate data center impacts.
“People across the country are definitely paying attention to the existential risk and what is coming out about that,” Kremer said. On Sunday, Kremer participated in a panel at a gathering of AI luminaries in nearby Berkeley, where she laid out the future of conservative AI approaches to mitigate such potential outcomes.
Kremer said she vehemently disagreed with some of the conference’s participants about the idea that AI systems could ever be conscious or have a soul — a belief some Anthropic employees acknowledge as possible.
“Personally, I think it’s demonic,” she said, looking toward the Anthropic headquarters. “We are human beings, and we all have souls. And you cannot put a soul in a machine. Part of me feels sad for them that that’s how empty and soulless their lives are.”
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kremer and her cadre have found thousands of Americans fed up with large AI companies’ setting up data center projects under shady shell companies or under the protection of nondisclosure agreements. She pointed to a tour stop in Jonesburg, Missouri, a small town in a county of 12,000 people. Google and Amazon have announced they will invest a combined $25 billion in data centers in the county over the coming years.
“That is a David-versus-Goliath story,” she said. “How do you ever fight that alone?”
The journey hasn’t been without its bumps. Kremer has received death threats, some from staunchly pro-AI people, her husband said. And sometimes the road has been too rough for the bus itself — one gravel road in Wakarusa, Kansas, proved impassable and forced the team to ask the owners of a nearby house whether they could hold their rally there instead of farther down the road.
“Word got to the people down the dirt road, and then all of a sudden, before you know it, here they come,” Kremer said. “It was like ‘Field of Dreams.’ They just kept coming, the cars and the people. It just warms your heart.”
The Humans First team is clear-eyed that not all Americans are completely on board with their message. President Donald Trump has repeatedly embraced data centers and the AI buildout as an economic boon that must be embraced, referring to AI as a “golden goose.”
Kremer said she strongly disagrees with Trump about AI, pointing out that MAGA regulars don’t need to agree with him on every policy point. “He’s got a lot going on,” Kremer said, placing blame for misguided AI policy on the tech investors who use Trump’s attention to advance their anti-guardrail, pro-AI views.
“I don’t want a data center in my backyard, and I don’t think President Trump wants a data center in his backyard, either,” she said.
Several team members said they didn’t expect their tech-skeptical message to get a warm welcome from the tech companies themselves, either, though Kremer said she hadn’t tried too hard to get in touch with anyone at Anthropic, OpenAI or the other companies.
“I’m just grateful to be able to help carry that message from city to city,” she said, looking back at the bus and its slogans. “People feel so isolated that it’s just happening to their town or community, and no one will pay attention.”
Wrapping up the final interviews at the Anthropic stop, the gaggle of Humans First staff members boarded the bus as its diesel engine hummed back to life. Having completed its cross-country journey, the team said, the last mission was to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge to capture some final promotional video.
“If the American people can stand together, it doesn’t matter how much money Big Tech has or how much they can control the algorithms,” Kylie Jane Kremer said. “There is nothing that can defeat the will of the American people.”
