‘The people say stop’: New Mexico students walk out to protest data centers.

New Mexico is known for its art. Data centers designed to train and deploy artificial intelligence are antithetical to that famed reputation, said Otis Caserta, a sophomore at New Mexico School for the Arts. “We are artists as a state and also artists in a desert,” he said. “And we are sitting here watching this government blindly build a data center we don’t need that will suck up all of the water that we need to drink and survive.” Caserta was one of about 200 NMSA students who walked out of class Tuesday and marched to the state Capitol to protest Project Jupiter, the massive data center being built in Doña Ana County. The students clutched signs — one read “every bad sci-fi movie starts like this,” another read “you can’t drink data” — and chanted all the way to the Governor’s Office. ✍️: Lily Alexander 🎥: Jaclyn Ruiz #projectjupiter #newmexico #donaana #openai #datacenter