There may be something to this idea, but I think the answer to "Why not?" centers around the fact that the normie opposition to data centers is about local impacts, so local opposition is net positive by that reasoning. The doomer's opposition is global, so a local ban (where anything not almost-global is local) is plausibly neutral (data centers move elsewhere) to negative (where you can't subject them to local laws). A bit like how natural gas infrastructure can be net positive or net negative for climate change impact, and opposing such without a larger-scale, coherent, effective strategy can be a mistake.
I disagree that for normies it's about local impacts. That's one of 7 concerns driving the anti-data center fervor, and they have rallied against data centers because that's where they have the most power. Arguably their epistemic is kind of poor since it's a big "reductio ad Hitlerum" where Hitlerum = AI, and yet, it coalesced around where they actually have power, so it's not that reductive either. They really are just outperforming rationalists here and we should join them.
I'm curious which seven you have in mind? The ones I generally see are water use, energy prices, noise, air pollution, aesthetics, climate change impact, and labor market impact, of which I would argue the first 5 are primarily local concerns.
Or maybe this is a definitional difference I didn't catch. I see people expressing much more global-impact opposition to AI in the abstract (concentration of wealth/power, effects on education, effects on the arts, slop, etc.) than I do to data center construction in specific places. Now I'm curious how much real overlap there is between these two things.
You may have heard that many of us are working very hard to elect Alex Bores to Congress in the NY-12 Democratic primary. Voting begins today. See ny12.org to learn how to vote, and text/call your Manhattanite friends reminding them to do so.
This strategy has some limitations: Alex will be in the minority party for two years, and Congress is ineffective just anyway. More of the value in an Alex victory seems secondary: it shows D voters stand up to pro-AI PAC money and there will now be an AI-literate Congressperson.
So, regarding an alternate strategy, you may have heard everyone hates data centers. It's a become a fervor with a large number of people believing data centers are on the cusp of taking all their energy and water. Given that we also believe that for more doom-related reasons, we may be better off allying with them, than extolling the virtues of data centers while trying to sell technical regulation to them.
I don't "good policy"-level support a data center moratorium, but I can tolerate bits and pieces of a data center moratorium if it strengthens the anti-AI bloc and if I get a stake in it.
For example I might collaborate with a county commissioner relative of mine:
Me: "Hey, that data center ban you're working on? Mind slipping in a clause that AI companies can't ship untested models to Random County, KA?"
She: "That's more of a state thing is it not?"
Me: "Nah, don't care. Make 'em fight it. I just want people thinking about what an 'untested model' is."
Or consider the ballot measure: for reasons I don't recall, they're used quite a bit in California, and even a failed ballot measure is a way to put a message in front of many people at once. The "data center ban" on XY state's ballot measure ought to include a clause about frontier models. Most people might not know or think about that clause but as long as it's in the same direction as the data center ban, it's fine.