PHILADELPHIA — The battle over data centers and the artificial intelligence they power has officially reached Philadelphia City Hall.

A coalition of activist groups and environmental advocates gathered at City Hall Monday to call on local lawmakers to pass a moratorium on data center construction in the city, the opening salvo for the group’s public pressure campaign to oppose the projects that it says could hike energy rates and drive pollution.

“There’s way too much at stake to let data centers expand without guardrails,” said Sonya Sanders, board president of Philly Thrive, an advocacy group for racial, economic, and environmental justice.

The coordinated push could put Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and members of City Council in a politically tricky spot as they gear up to run for reelection in the spring. Data centers have proven deeply controversial and have drawn bipartisan backlash, but some unions that see job-creating potential support their construction.

There is no specific data center proposal currently under consideration by City Council, and no member has said that that they will introduce a moratorium bill. A spokesperson for Council President Kenyatta Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.

Any data center legislation would have to run through Parker, a centrist Democrat who has not staked a position on the issue. She is allied with the unions that represent construction workers and has generally been pro-development. However, she positioned herself as an opponent of big tech earlier this year when she advocated for new taxes on companies like Uber and Airbnb.

A spokesperson for the mayor did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.

The data center activists’ event Monday came as fear of AI’s rapid development and increasingly human-like capabilities has spread substantially and as leaders of the nation’s largest AI developers over the weekend signaled support for a global slowdown.

On Saturday, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei wrote that the technology is advancing more rapidly than leading companies can implement safeguards. Several of his top rivals, including Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of SpaceX, endorsed his call for a slower pace of growth.

Meanwhile, talks of regulation have gripped Washington, with lawmakers from both major parties drafting plans to rein in tech companies and add layers of oversight to AI development. Any proposal faces an uncertain future, as President Donald Trump has said the country should remove barriers to AI development and accelerate advancement in order to outpace China.

On Monday morning, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”

Inaction in Washington has left an opening for states and cities to regulate the construction of data centers, which produce the massive amount of computing power needed for artificial intelligence. They have become increasingly unpopular — a July poll found that 3 in 4 Pennsylvanians don’t want a data center in their backyard.

Municipalities in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, now have more power than ever to slow or halt the development of data centers. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who is considered a potential presidential contender and who had previously courted data center projects, last month signed an executive order requiring local approval for any project to receive a state permit.

Philadelphia is already home to eight data centers that were constructed before the issue was widely controversial. The existing data centers are far smaller than the newer “hyperscale” projects that are meant to power AI and have faced opposition in communities across the country.

In July, the city’s planning commission said there are only two locations in the city that could support an industrial-size data center: the former South Philly refinery site known as the Bellwether District and 2600 Grant Ave., a city-owned plot adjacent to the Northeast Philadelphia airport.

Planning commission officials emphasized that they were not asked to consider a specific proposal to build a data center at either of those sites.

City Council has thus far not taken action on data centers, aside from passing a resolution authored by Councilmember Rue Landau earlier this year to hold hearings on the issue. A hearing has not yet been scheduled.

Council, which is led by a supermajority of Democrats, will convene Thursday for the first meeting of the fall session. Members are unlikely to green-light a controversial data center project ahead of the primary election in May, when every Council seat will be on the ballot.

But activists said Monday that city lawmakers must take proactive steps to ban data centers temporarily while they draft a regulatory framework and a system for considering public input on proposed projects.

Shawmar Pitts, the managing co-director of Philly Thrive — which is rooted in the communities that surround the former South Philly oil refinery — said Council members are “on notice.”

“Don’t put a moratorium in place, and your seat will be taken,” he warned.

Senia Lopez, a Northeast Philly resident and an organizer with the advocacy group 215 People’s Alliance, said people in neighborhoods surrounding any future hyperscale data center would be saddled with higher utility costs and “increased threats to our health.”

“City Council must chose whose interests it represents,” Lopez said. “It can side with big tech companies seeking to extract from our communities, or it can stand with the working people who have built and sustained them.”

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