> but is who ultimately owns the downside risk of the AI infra boom?

The US taxpayer for the inevitable corporate bailouts.

We don't have enough energy production for massive AI buildouts. New energy capacity will not come online fast. National and regional grids will be stressed contributing to impacts on populations and industries. New energy capacity will be expensive and if carbon-intensive will accelerate climate breakdown. Additionally at current fossil fuel prices, energy prices (will) rise dramatically. Currently planned locations for buildouts are suboptimal at best, horrible at worst and vehemently opposed by local populations. That could be NIMBYISM, but in this case it's probably justified: who would want a noisy, ugly-looking grey cube raising electricity prices near their house? And that's just one angle. There are many more. Nothing to do with "AI will take our jobs", that's a pretty low-effort justification/theory.

They are getting too big and too cozy with federal govt, making a bailout more likely

They are moving too fast and using too much dirty energy

They are committing crimes to trick people into thinking they've created god

None of your three theories are correct at all

To me its not just about AI, but how they utilize all this financial scenarios to push things absolutely over the top, e.g. fast inclusion into indexes and essentially funding bubble from people's 401k.

What are the benefits to actual people? What you are gonna replace lost jobs with? All electronics with ram or storage is now way more expensive due to AI gobling up everything. And then there are local power grid impact concerns.

Why would you be suprised there is opposition?

People are scared about their future and don't think AI is going to make things better. And who could blame them? A movie that doesn't have any conflict and ends with everyone being happy and everything is nice isn't going to sell a lot of tickets. So we get endless variations of that movie where AI and robots are going to kill us and terminate humanity.

That is the backdrop against which real life AI that's actually happening and is here today has to compete with. If I was in the horse carriage industry when the car came out, I would be up in arms about it as well. People are scared, and rightly so. If I don't have a job, because they don't need me, because AI can do it, then how do I pay my rent or for food? If we lived in a world where we treated poor people well, and they're just down on their luck, they just need a helping hand that we're happy to give. Then the coming jobpocalypse wouldn't be so scary, and people wouldn't be so up in arms against AI. We only have to look at the history of coal miners to realize that there's no one coming to save us though.

Hearing the ghoulish haunting noise that the jet turbines that Elon Musk put down, and thinking: that could be your future; is enough to get everyone and their mom off the couch and dead set against the entire concept. That noise, non-stop, for the rest of forever.

We don't do subtleties at all, because if you give them an inch, they're going to take a mile, so in a different world it would be possible to be pro AI data centers while also being for upholding regulations on water and noise pollution, along with not raising the cost of electricity, but that doesn't seem to be the world we live in. People don't trust their local politicians to make sure that doesn't happen, so I can't blame people for being against AI data center build outs entirely.