Will the backlash against AI data centres hit quantum computing too?

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New Scientist columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan has raised a question that the quantum industry probably needs to hear. Public anger about AI data centres is growing, with local campaigns over power use, water and noise in plenty of countries. Her worry is that quantum computing has become so tangled up with AI in the public mind that it could get caught in the same backlash. If people think of quantum as just another power-hungry part of the AI boom, it may face opposition it has not earned

The argument is that quantum needs to separate itself from AI if it wants to scale. That is tricky, because the industry has spent the past two years leaning into the AI connection. Plenty of quantum press releases talk about quantum machine learning, hybrid AI workflows or partnerships with Nvidia. That marketing helps raise money, but it also ties quantum's reputation to something many people are now wary of. Investors have rewarded that approach so far

The energy picture is very different, which is what makes the overlap frustrating. A big quantum computer does draw serious power, mostly for cooling, but the BCG report out this week estimates the world would only need somewhere between 230 and 1,400 of them by 2040. That is nothing like the thousands of huge AI campuses being planned. A single site with a few quantum machines is not the same as a gigawatt data centre

There is still a risk, though. Quantum computers will often sit inside or next to existing data centres, sharing power, cooling and networking. If a local council is already fighting a data centre expansion, it is unlikely to care whether the new building holds GPUs or qubits. Perception can matter more than the numbers

I think this is a fair warning, and it links nicely to the Q-Factor piece about the engineering challenges of scaling. Should quantum companies stop talking about AI so much? Or is the link too useful for raising money to give up?. Nobody wants to see a promising field slowed down by a fight that is not about it at all

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