By Inside a sunlit coffee shop off US-36, the highway connecting Denver’s tech corridor to Boulder, a 28-year-old UX designer prompts ChatGPT to streamline a snippet of JavaScript. The response generates in seconds. She copies the code, closes the tab, and when asked how she feels about the technology she relies on daily, doesn’t hesitate:
“I hate it,” she says flatly. “It feels like a massive, terrifying economic ticking time bomb.”
That cognitive dissonance—the gap between adopting a tool and deeply despising its existence—is no longer a fringe sentiment along the Front Range. It is the defining consensus of Colorado.
According to a landmark study released by Broomfield-based nonpartisan research firm Magellan Strategies, two-thirds of Colorado registered voters hold an unfavorable opinion of artificial intelligence. But the raw numbers obscure a far stranger, more intimate story: Coloradans are actively using AI while simultaneously treating it as an existential threat to their environment, their livelihoods, and the fabric of their communities.
Sixty percent of respondents admitted to using AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini over the past 12 months. Yet, 66% view the technology unfavorably—including 41% who describe their opposition as “very unfavorable.”
The Youth Revolt
For years, Silicon Valley pitched AI as the defining tool for digital natives—a seamless upgrade for younger workers and students. In Colorado, that demographic has become its fiercest opposition.
The survey reveals a stark generational divide. Among Coloradans aged 18 to 44, a staggering 81% view artificial intelligence unfavorably. Only 16% in that bracket expressed a positive view, compared to more than 40% among voters over 45.
The animosity among younger workers isn’t born out of techno-fear; it is born out of exposure. While older respondents often view AI as an administrative shortcut or a curiosity, younger workers are sitting in the target zone of workplace displacement.
“I think generative AI is completely useless and discourages critical thought, research, and learning in general in every age group,” wrote one male respondent from Boulder.
An astounding 77% of all voters expect AI to eliminate jobs, with 88% expressing deep anxiety about career prospects for future generations. Among employed respondents, 41% openly fear losing their own positions to automation.
“Not in My Watershed”
If job anxiety is the spark, Colorado’s environmental reality is the powder keg.
In a state defined by fragile high-desert ecosystems, recurring drought, and volatile energy costs, the physical infrastructure required to power generative AI has turned public discomfort into civic rage.
The study exposed an overwhelming, partisan-defying hostility toward data centers—the sprawling, high-consumption server farms needed to run large language models.
“AI is going to add a huge demand to the electric and water systems in Colorado,” an Arapahoe County woman wrote in her survey response. “We better be 1,000% sure we have a plan… Colorado is already suffering through a drought and record heat.”
Her concerns mirror a growing political firestorm across the state. In recent months, municipalities from Larimer County to Denver have pushed back against tech developers. The Denver City Council unanimously enacted a one-year moratorium on new data center construction, while local grassroot campaigns have successfully blocked facilities projected to consume millions of gallons of water daily—water that local farmers and homeowners argue the state simply cannot spare.
Eighty-three percent of voters believe data centers pull too much power from the grid, 82% say they consume unsustainable amounts of water, and 78% believe the facilities will directly inflate local residential utility bills. Only 16% buy the tech industry’s core promise that data centers bring long-term economic prosperity.
The China Exception and the Divide
The few bright spots for AI support reveal a sharp ideological split in why people tolerate the technology.
Among Republicans—who proved slightly more friendly to the tech than Democrats or unaffiliated voters—the primary justification isn’t corporate efficiency; it’s national security. Dozens of pro-AI respondents cited a geopolitical arms race.
“If we don’t lead with AI, someone else will—specifically China,” wrote an Arapahoe County voter who supported tech development. “I would rather be at the front instead of behind.”
Medical innovation also earned cautious praise, with 40% acknowledging AI could yield breakthroughs in healthcare. But when applied to local governance or education, trust evaporates entirely: 70% object to local governments using AI in operations, 75% oppose its deployment in public school classrooms, and 83% state point-blank that current AI tools are unsafe for children.
A Warning for Big Tech
Perhaps the most damaging takeaway for executives in San Francisco and Seattle is that Coloradans do not trust the architects.
Public sentiment toward major tech executives has plunged into near-total hostility. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg drew a 91% unfavorable rating in the survey, while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sits at 82% unfavorable. Even OpenAI’s Sam Altman, once treated by Washington as an elder statesman of the tech boom, registered a 61% unfavorable view.
A full 55% of Colorado voters now favor an outright, state-wide ban on new data center construction.
For a state that transformed its front range into a flourishing tech hub over the last two decades, the message is clear: Colorado isn’t rejecting technology, but it is drawing a hard line at a tool that demands its water, threatens its jobs, and offers little human value in return.
As one Jefferson County voter summarized in three concise sentences: “We were told this would free up our time to make art and enjoy nature. Instead, it’s writing bad art and taking our water so we can’t enjoy nature. We don’t want it.”
