Government is Putting AI Before People and the Planet w/ Matt Haugen

Governments are prioritizing data centers at the expense of communities and the planet, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Matt Haugen joins Paris Marx to discuss how national strategies are dismantling environmental protections while enriching a handful of megacorporations, and what an alternative agenda could look like.

Matt Haugen is Research and Editorial Manager at the Climate and Community Institute.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Support the show on Patreon.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Check out the new report Matt co-wrote AI First.
• If you missed it, Molly White recently broke down how the tech industry is spending big on elections.
• Big tech’s emissions are continuing to rise.
• Colossus is still being powered by unpermitted gas turbines.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You can imagine what inside of an AI first agenda, we had like a people and planet first agenda. And so think about that from like the to the highest level, where like, okay, how are we approaching the planning of our economy, the planning of our electricity grid, the planning of our the design of our cities and our land use that's actually benefiting the well-being of ecosystems, the well-being of people, first and foremost, and not Sam Altman or Elon Musk or whoever else, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:46

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Matt Haugen. Matt is research and editorial manager at the Climate and Community Institute. And I wanted to have him on the show because he recently co-authored a report that looked into how the US government is really helping to support these major AI companies and what the implications of that are for us. In particular, whether we can look at what the US government is doing with the AI companies in order to see an opportunity to use that same degree of state capacity, state power to do something very different. In our conversation, we dig into all of the kind of subsidies and regulations that the US government has created in order to support companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, but also, you know, just the major players, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, the like, right? How those companies are supported in pursuing this AI agenda, this vision of the future that we're supposed to all be engaged in, and how the US government also benefits from that, right? In many different ways, in ways that we have talked about on the podcast in the past. There's explicit support for these companies, for these technologies, but there's also the kind of deregulation and allowing companies to ensure that other people, that other parts of society are picking up the cost for the expansion of AI, for the build-out of data centers that they are all engaging in at the moment. I think it's pretty clear that this is a problem, right? And of course, since Matt works at the Climate and Community Institute, I also wanted to ask him about the climate impact of all of this, you know, because we see these companies basically throwing away their climate commitments, just wanting to pursue generative AI and data centers at all costs, regardless of what that means for not just the community, but for the climate as well, right? For a fight against the climate crisis and our ability to live on a planet that, you know, isn't like scorching hot and having wildfires and terrible natural disasters all the time. And so, you know, I think that's an important part of this conversation, but it also leads us into that bigger piece of like, what would the vision be? Like, how would we use this state power in a different way? And that's very much around, you know, not just creating better technology that isn't this kind of technology that the tech industry is pushing, but also, you know, addressing climate change and creating a better life for so many people, not just in the United States, but around the world and how that is possible. And this build-out shows us that the state can do things, can support major initiatives. Unfortunately, it just happens to be the wrong ones and ones that are oriented toward, you know, basically increasing the power and profits of the tech industry and of these tech billionaires rather than actually helping the wider public. And so I think that this is a really interesting conversation to get a bigger picture of the way that the state is supporting this project to push AI on all of us. But also how we should not just, you know, give up on the ability of government to do any good thing, but to recognize that there is power there, that that power should be seized, that it can be seized, and that we can do better things if we put our mind and our efforts to doing so. So if you do like this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star view on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making Tech Won's Save Us every single week, so we can keep digging into what the AI industry is doing to our societies, but also the wider impacts of the tech industry. You can join supporters like Olivia in the Bay Area by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Matt, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Glad to be here. Uh longtime listener. So thanks so much. Excited to be on. I appreciate that. And, you know, obviously I've been following you on social media for like ages. So I'm very familiar with you and your work. And it's a bit surprising to me that this is the first time that we're even like on a video call, as far as I can remember. But, you know, it's great to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad we finally had a chance, had uh an opportunity or excuse to do it.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Absolutely, absolutely. And of course, you know, you work at the Climate and Community Institute, and you guys have a great new report looking into kind of the AI boom that we're still experiencing. You know, unfortunately, it hasn't crashed yet. Um, but you know, maybe soon, maybe soon. Um, but also like, you know, what it reveals, you know, the ways that the state is pushing this and how this power could be used in a different way. And of course, we'll get to that later in the episode. But I wanted to start a bit more broadly. You know, we've been watching this AI boom now for uh going on four years, right? You know, it's three and a bit. It'll be four come November, which is the anniversary of when ChatGPT was released. As you have been watching this, and certainly, you know, the more recent kind of instantiations of it, what goes through your mind as you know see how this is all playing out?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yeah, it's uh it's it's hard to keep up with sometimes, right? It feels like it's it's so big and it's happening so at such a large scale and so quickly, it really feels just unprecedented in many ways. But there's also some precedents and some important history and to needs to be situated in context, right? As I'm sure we'll get into. You know, I'm really approaching it from the climate, from an environmental angle first and foremost, right? So as you've discussed um often, and uh I'm sure your listeners are aware of, you know, the the data center build out is just enormous in the United States, especially. You know, the energy usage, the the greenhouse gas emissions, the localized environmental costs have been uh really quite significant with this data center build-out. And it's uh projected or planned to be even higher in the future. You know, there's a recent Bloomberg report that estimated uh data center usage in the US will be 20% of US electricity usage by 2035, right? And that's just hard to wrap your head around that kind of scale. Like there's nothing else like this. You know, we'll we'll see if that actually happens, right? But even even the existing AI and data centers we see is very significant. So the other thing I think, and and your um your show and uh and others have been helpful is is it's often really hard to separate the hype and the promises from what is actually happening, right? So we have all these projections for what's gonna happen with AI and data centers, but what what actually exists right now and what can we actually project in in the near-term future? What the architects of the AI boom, the biggest beneficiaries are saying and what they're doing, even is a world-making project to me, is how I think about it. Right? They're reshaping a lot of the physical terrain of the world, both from the build-out of data centers, the physical footprint of that, and then also the future of the planet and the biosphere from the emissions, uh, but also reshaping the world of our information environment, our education systems, our governments, our institutions. Uh, they're trying to do those things at least. So we have to think about on that scale and think about alternatives on that scale.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

That's how I'm thinking about it right now. Aaron Powell I think you've put that into great context for us, right? You know, to give us the different aspects of what we're seeing from this AI moment, what these tech companies are trying to do with it, and you know, the very real problems that that come with it. And just sticking with the climate point for a minute, you know, it's kind of wild to think that just a few years ago, these companies were trying to present themselves as, you know, green companies, as climate leaders, as all these sorts of things. And then there were just reports recently that Google's emissions just last year were up, I think it was 18%, Microsoft's were up 25% or somewhere around there, just in a single year, right? These are just massive increases. And paired with that, uh, you know, as you discussed in the report, we're seeing increasingly these data centers being co-located with gas-powered generation in order to, you know, kind of power the computers and the cooling. I wonder for you, as someone who has been working on climate issues for so long, what you make of just how much the tech industry has gotten into bed with the fossil fuel industry and how just like out in the open that that is now.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

It has, like you've been talking about, it has been quite jarring to see how seemingly how quickly a lot of these companies have jettisoned. Um, you know, they often made a big show of we're committing to net zero and carbon neutrality or um, you know, renewable energy and and all these sorts of things, right? And it feels like they just overnight toss them aside because, well, AI is more important and it seems like a big potential, you know, a big potential source of profit. You know, and and I think that just highlights a lot of people, you know, probably myself and probably you and many others thought, you know, corpor, okay, corporate commitments, uh, promises are we don't know how much that's worth you know when they happen, right? Okay, well, let's see you actually follow through on it. Right. So, and I think this just shows that. And and you know, I I think not just tech companies, I think we're seeing this with a lot of other companies that are also seem to be going in all in on AI and trying to incorporate AI and and throwing aside environmental and climate pledges. And I and I think it's really uh, you know, it's very, it's just very concerning. And I think that show highlights why we need regulation and why and why we can't depend on voluntary commitments. You know, that's that's what we need the government for, and that's what we need regulation for to make sure these things actually happen and happen in a way that benefits benefits people on the planet um as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Yeah, I completely agree. You know, it it's just when I think about it, right? Like I feel like a bit before the pandemic, like mid-late 2010s, we were hearing these stories about how, you know, Google, Amazon, Microsoft were selling their cloud services to the fossil fuel companies to help them like better extract fossil fuels. And people were like, this doesn't seem great. You know, this seems very counter to what they're suggesting, right? And then, you know, we get the big pledges after their employees are pushing back, right? In the in the kind of 2020, 2019 era. And then we move forward into like the generative AI moment. And it's kind of like, wow, it seems like these data centers are, you know, demanding a lot of electricity and they're trying to present it as though like, don't worry, we're gonna have renewables for this, we're gonna have nuclear energy that is gonna help power these data centers. So like, don't worry about the emissions part, we'll have it sorted. And now it feels like the past like six to eight months, it's just become, yeah, we need the fossil fuels, like, you know, we're we're gonna need a lot more of them. And this is just the way it is, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Yeah, it it's it it really is shocking. With, you know, I guess it goes along with what's happening with AI and data center buildup, just how fast um all this was seemingly tossed aside. Like I thought you said you cared about the climate crisis. Why are you building a whole bunch of gas plants? That's just completely uh uh it goes against that.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Totally, totally. But you know, if you look at their sustainability reports, they'll make it look uh totally acceptable, right? You know, obviously this report looks a lot at the way that the tech industry has been really supported by the US government and the federal government in particular, in terms of kind of building out this AI infrastructure, you know, making this technology something that is going to be widely adopted, you know, that sort of a thing. Obviously, we know that the US government has been very involved in supporting the fossil fuel industry for a very long time, for a century, how you know, however long, right? Um, but I feel like when we think about technology, it's often presented as though, you know, okay, if AI is rolling out now, it's just because of some new innovations that the tech companies have thought up. How is it that the US government is actually supporting what we're seeing in this moment?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

I think the way people talk about or think about the quote unquote free market is a little bit misleading because the way I think about it is that there's not really such a thing as a free market as how people conceive of it, as the sort of terrain of the economy is fundamentally shaped by the government, by the state that these, you know, all these corporations and our our economy and our society exist in, right? And I think that's especially true with tech. Um the tech industry seems to like to really pretend like they're libertarians or we don't need government and we're just we're just innovating out here in our garages. Right. So you can you can go all the way back for decades um as as you know, of how you know, whether it's the internet, whether it's um the microwave and all and all these different technologies that have come out of in a very direct way public research. So you have that with AI, but then more recently, you know, I think we've seen with the Trump administration especially, has just come out with a flurry of executive orders. They have this what we call an AI first agenda, right? So they're they s seemingly all in on AI in many ways, and they're saying this is a strategic priority for the United States, and we need to do everything we can to facilitate this build-out. And that looks like, you know, saying AI is a national security priority. That looks like government contracting trying to put AI into all sorts of uh in the government all sorts of ways. You know, we saw it with Doge, kind of in some ways. AI investors all throughout the federal government shaping the government's AI policy, um, which is a very clear conflict of interest. Building off that, there's all sorts of regulations and non-enforcement of regulations and deregulation that they're doing with these data centers and with AI, you know, non-enforcing Clean and Air Act, uh, facilitating faster permitting. You have to think about also a little bit more broadly than just specific AI things like that. So there's like what we talked about in the report, there's federal tax policy, which, you know, with uh one big beautiful bill act, I cringe a little every time I have to say that. But but it's so beautiful. How could you cringe? Yeah. It's it's kind of embarrassing to be in the US right now with this happening. Um, you know, the slashing of corporate tax rates. You know, we calculate just three of the hyperscalers alone, you know, avoided 50 billion in taxes in last year. And that allows them to accumulate so much cash that they can use for AI and for data center build-out and to use that as leverage, right? So uh you have to think even bigger than than the thing that say this is for AI, right? Because so much of federal policy is shaping what's happening. And you know, there's there's other things that we talk about, um that's like they're taking um taking stakes in companies, you know, to secure access to minerals, to secure access to to uh chips and shaping the the the terrain of of GPUs and CPUs. And uh there's um you know back to climate and and environment, there's they're ordering fossil fuel plants to keep open, to to keep running. They were supposed to be closed, right? And they're saying this is because we need power for AI. Now, I think it's important to also look at that in the context of they're doing everything they can to uh try and slow down renewable energy and stop renewable energy development. So it's a little bit uh jarring or wild to see that to them see how um flimsy of an excuse that is. But you know, and and that could keeping if if you extend that excuse of keeping these fossil fuel plants that are supposed to close, keeping them running to all the ones that are supposed to be closed, I think it's um 54. That could cause billions of dollars in increased cost for ratepayers because renewables are are cheaper than fossil fuels right now, and also cause just enormous harm from from future climate damage and from localized um air pollution. And you know, I think there's a there's a few more specifics we can get into with how the government's um facilitating this, but yeah, those are the highlights.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Absolutely. Yeah, and and I think it's a great overview, right, of the things that are in the report. And I want to dig into several different aspects of it, but I want to start with that big number that you gave us, right? Like three companies avoiding $50 billion in tax in just a single year. Like it's such a big number that it's hard to even like imagine how much money that is, you know, just because it's so enormous, those kinds of numbers are just not numbers that you're dealing with unless you're like an Elon Musk or a Jeff Bezos or something. And even then they probably are like, this is just so much money, I don't know what I would even do. I guess I'm gonna send rockets into space or something, you know? Like um, but like how how does this actually happen, right? How do these companies avoid that much in tax? And what is the effect of allowing them then to get away with not paying all of that money?

SPEAKER_01 17:54

So the f I mean they just reduce the corporate tax rate, right? And and I think the the companies have all kinds of strategies to avoid taxes. Um so uh I'm not like a tax policy expert, like getting into the weeds of how they do that. You know, I know there's there's like with the data centers they're using um often using like starting other using like third-party companies and stuff like that. I'm not sure if that plays into tax avoidance or not, but um and you know they're they're headquartered and in different places. So we what we did was look at like what the actual rate is and then what and look at their and look at how much they actually pay. So I think it's a combination of of a lowered rate and then you know strategies that can allow them to pay less. Which again goes back to like we can't depend on companies to do things voluntarily. You know, they have so much money like to spend on data centers and to spend on AI infrastructure. But a lot of these data centers seem to be um being financed with debt. And so the more assets you have, the more um debt you're able to take on as well. And you know, I think if if you look even beyond companies to individuals as well, I think it's important to think about the tax policy uh implications where we're seeing AI now becoming a major player in elections and spending enormous amounts of money. You know, Elon Musk, the most no most notably in 2024, right? And really trying to stifle any policy that could slow down their build-out or to lower their profits.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah, I think that's really well said, right? And I was even talking to Molly White a few weeks ago about how so many of these AI companies and you know, people involved with AI companies are spending big in the midterms to come, right? To try to shape the AI policies that they're seeing there. And of course, I know your report looks primarily at what's happening on the federal government level, but we're seeing, you know, on the state level, on the local level, that these companies and these data center projects are getting big tax breaks there as well, right? To kind of you know uh allow them to get away with not paying more tax. And to me, when I think about all this money being avoided, right, when I think about the $50 billion just for three of these big tech companies, let alone, you know, what Apple is saving and all this kind of stuff, you were talking earlier about the world-making part of this, right? The way that they are kind of shaping the world that we live in. And if they have so much capital to deploy and so much additional capital, I feel like that gives them even more power to do that, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think we need to think about money as power, right? And that's it's just like uh it allows you to do things that you couldn't otherwise do, especially when it's unequal to the staggering levels that we're seeing.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Uh it's it's really shocking. Like, but it's but it's also not surprising, right? You know, I'm wondering, you were talking a lot about, you know, the different regulations, the different actions, the procurement that the federal government is doing in the United States in order to support the AI industry. Why is it that the US government is so invested in this particular project, right? In kind of ensuring adoption of AI, in building out all these data centers. Well what does the US government actually get out of that? Huh.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Well, that's a great question. I think uh, you know, I think we can look at what what is actually being said, and I think we can also maybe speculate a little bit on some of the motives behind that it's maybe being unsaid. You know, a lot of justification seems like, well, this is the this is the technology of the future. This is going to and and I think a lot of it is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, is a lot of it is based in science fiction, imagine imaginations, imaginaries, right? Not necessarily things that might be actually possible. You know, I know you've covered Elon Musk extensively. We all I think we all know Elon Musk makes a lot of promises, you know, whether it's going to Mars uh or you know, the autonomous robots, um, all these things. And and we're seeing that with AI, with AGI, with superintelligence.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

There was uh he did this uh interview with The Economist recently, like as we speak. And I don't know if you watched the whole thing, but people will probably be familiar. He made this tweet like a couple months ago that. There was going to be civil war in Britain. And he was kind of like pressed on this point. And he was like, you know, I think civil war in Britain is going to happen, but it's 20 years away. But the good news is that the AI and robot singularity is 10 years away and that will like negate the need for a civil war. I was like, dude, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Oh my God. I didn't, yeah, I didn't see that part. I didn't watch the whole thing. I saw some clips. Well, it's better for your mental health, I think, than you can. That's such a good example. Because like, what is that? Number one, that's probably not possible. Number two, what does that even make sense? You know, it feels like a lot of his promises of AI in the future is like it's very vague. Like, okay, we're gonna have super intelligence and AGI, but how does that how does that actually work and how does that improve people's lives? It's not really clear. But again, I think it's important to to question, you know, whether or not something like that is possible, uh, especially extrapolating from the technologies we have now. You know, I think that's a state of reasons. Like, this is the technology of the future, we have to, we have to invest in this, and we have to we also have to beat China, right? That's another key part of the AI first, of the AI strategic priority, is that we're in this existential race with China to who builds AGI, who builds superintelligence first. And then I don't know, again, it's very vague. Like, I don't know what happens if you get the AGI first, like you win the world. Like, what does that even mean? This escalating tension with China, um, or using China as a boogeyman for what you whatever you want to do is is a very concern because to me that's just that's a warlike posture, that's a militaristic posture, and that ties into another uh reason that they seem to be so interested in AI is its applications for military uh usage, which uh you know, which we've seen in Gaza, which we've seen in the Iran War, participating in in death and destruction and killing and participating in the murder of all sorts of people. And that seems to be a big part of the use case, right? And I think we're seeing AI companies, which we write about a little bit in the report, are, you know, again, similar to the climate pledges, a lot of companies had these pledges about we're not gonna use our tools for military, we're not gonna use them for you know certain things related to that. And a lot of them have dropped those pledges. Because there's so much money, you know. Famously, the United States military budget is enormous. It's around a trillion dollars right now. There's a lot of money up for grabs. And with military and other government contractor more broadly, you can get what's called lock-in, where vendor lock-in, where you're just kind of if you're so integrated into the system, it's very hard to dislodge. You like, well, we have to keep using this company's tool because it we depend on it. And and I think there's a lot of there's a lot of groupthink and a lot of people buying the hype, it seems like to me, especially the richer you are and the more divorced from from the concerns of working people you are. Like, um, I think with AI more than a lot of other technologies, we see it, that seems to be the case to me. Um, you know, I think there's been some interesting data showing that like the higher you are in the corporate, in the corporate uh structure, the more you use AI, uh, you know, CEOs, the C-suite versus workers. Uh and I think that that promise of like I can do we can do more work and have more output with fewer workers is just like the something that's designed to be enticing to to a capitalist, to a CEO, right? I think another thing that's happening is this is like the next big thing, you know, with the hype. It's like we we can't we can't miss out on this. There's potentially a lot of money to be made. To me, the few the how that works uh doesn't really make a lot of sense. Like if you put everyone out of a job, how are they gonna buy your goods? There's a lot of like contradictory visions of the future going on here. And and I think there's just a lot of people, like I was talking about earlier, with with the revolving door with the VCs involved in the government, there's a lot of people who just straight up stand to benefit a lot if from increasing the the value of AI from funneling money to AI through contracts and subsidies and things like that. Just the sort of very direct corruption and uh conflicts of interest that we're seeing in the Trump administration on a like staggering level.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Yeah, I think staggering is exactly right, you know, with with everything that we're seeing. I don't know. In in some ways, I'm I'm surprised to see how much has gone into it. But then on the other hand, I'm like, not. But it brings to mind to me there was this interview that uh I think it was Sundar Pachai gave like a couple years ago, and they were asking like why he was putting so much money into AI and into AI infrastructure. And his answer was basically like, well, it's better for us to put the money in and you know, basically to make sure that we don't miss out in case it is something, than like us not putting the money in. And then there's these other companies that are beating us now. Uh, so it's like maybe we're burning a bunch of money, but it's worthwhile to burn the money to make sure that we don't lose out at the end of the day, in case this is the next big thing, sort of a sort of a deal. And it feels to me like there's there's kind of like a view like that on the federal government and like the policy level as well. It's like maybe this is the next big thing. It's what our tech industry is telling us is the next big thing. And you know, it's such a massive industry. We have benefited a lot from this industry, so we should go along with it, especially if China is also competing and we can't risk China being the one to like win on AI if AI happens to be the big deal that everyone is suggesting that it is, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Yeah, absolutely. It just seems like it seems like there's so much of there's so much fear of of missing out of of uh but that that's not a good way to think about how about the world and how we shape the world and our infrastructure. Instead of thinking about what do we actually need, it's well, maybe someone else will make a lot of money on it. And that just that just highlights how the sort of misalignment of incentives I think we're we're seeing.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Yeah, how how how absolutely broken it is, right? And and I do want to talk about your vision for like how things could be different. But before we get to that, I'm I'm wondering, you know, you've talked a lot earlier about the impacts of AI itself, right? The impacts that we're seeing from this rollout, you know, what effects it is actually having on people. Um and of course, you mentioned the kind of data center build out. Obviously, we're hearing more and more stories about what these data centers are meaning for communities. But as you have the federal government getting so behind this project being pushed by the tech industry, what impacts does that have on workers, on regular people, on the public that is not being taken into account when basically their government is supporting everything that this industry wants?

SPEAKER_01 28:51

So at a high level, you know, what we've been talking about is shifting all these resources, whether it's financial, whether it's the physical, like concrete and silicon and everything else that goes into building data center and the chips, all and um all of that being spent on this instead of alternatives. And all of the sort of state capacity to like craft policy and regulation being directed towards facilitating this. But on a more local and direct level, we're seeing what is also, I think, you know, on the same level of the unprecedented um scale of the AI build-out is the the resistance to data centers. You know, I I can't recall seeing anything like this where it's it's people across the political spectrum, across the country, you know, just uh data centers, you know. We've seen all sorts of um campaigns to fight against data centers everywhere, rural, urban, suburban, all across the United States. People are very concerned, I think, about number one, that this feels like I was saying at the beginning, this is a world-making project and it feels like it's being imposed from above because it is, right? They're not no one's no one was asking for this. This wasn't like some kind of democratically decided plan. It's people with a lot of power and wealth said, we want to do this and we're gonna force it on you. And the reason we're gonna do it is because it's gonna take your job, and uh maybe the future will be there'll be a supercomputer that can do things for you in some way that is again very vague. So, like that's what's on offer. And so I think that's instilling a lot of fear in people and it's instilling a lot of anger in people. But then you have to look at the the data centers themselves, which um, you know, I know you have done a great job of covering, where there's all the fossil fuel generation that they're um, you know, both on the grid, and then we're seeing lots of off-grid, what's called behind the meter generation of gas plants. They're just building power plants specifically for the data centers. Famously, Elon Musk's Colossus plants uh near Memphis are just spewing pollution uh in the area. And so that's just that's increasing greenhouse gas emissions, you know, for the climate, um, increasing global warming and making the climate crisis worse. But then also the localized effects, health effects of of um of air pollution are really staggering and really bad, whether that's asthma and heart and heart and lung and potential future um brain damage from that, right? And then and then there's the land use issues where you know there's a data center that they're trying to build that's that's near me where they're gonna clear cut a huge forest to build that. The um the noise pollution, which I think is another under underrated cost of this, that also has health effects. It's not just like an annoying noise, right? That causes health effects to people that live nearby. And the water usage of data centers, which I think has been controversial to what extent that uh is an issue. Uh, I think people like to compare it to like an aggregate, but water concerns are very particular to the particular places they're in, right? If you build a data center in a desert, there's not a lot of water there, well then if they're using a ton of water for the data center, that's gonna cause some local issues, probably. This is causing a lot of cost to people, and it's not really clear what the benefits are. And that's not even to mention the issues with like chaplet psychosis and the attacks on education, the uh our information ecosystem. Like you see people now. I think one of the pernicious effects of AI is that people look at real videos and can say, this is AI. And it basically destroys it can kind of destroy the social fabric where you're you're not sure what's real or what's not. Students are not learning and they're just delivering, there's having ChatGPT write their essays. You know, there's so many costs uh from environmental to social to political. Oh, and that's not even to mention the you know, the potential authoritarian aspects of AI, which I think is a really important part of the story and why it's why it's enticing to people with a lot of wealth and power, because whether that's military applications or surveillance applications, it's very clear that this is a tool that can be used that is really ideal for increasing power to concentrate power at the top to a select few. There's a lot of costs in a lot of different areas and uh not a lot of clear benefits. So uh it's understandable why there's so much resistance to me.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Yeah, I I think so too. You know, it's it's no surprise to me that people have turned against this so extremely and and really so quickly, right? Like I feel like the opposition to data centers and to AI more broadly has arisen really quickly, you know, over a relatively short span of time as people started to feel the effects of these infrastructures and of what the tech industry is doing. And you know, I'm sure that's paired to some degree with just how a lot of public opinion has shifted on the tech industry and the tech billionaires and and things in in recent years, right? And even when Elon Musk's promises uh, you know, a universal high income and abundance for everybody, I don't think people are really buying into that uh, you know, that promise or that idea that that's really our our future, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Right. How much, how much do you think do you do you feel like people are still buying Elon Musk's promises to the extent they used to, or is people seeing through it more now?

SPEAKER_00 34:33

I think people are seeing through it, you know. Like I think he definitely has like a small, like very committed group of people who are still around him and are still falling for it. And unfortunately, there's still a lot of media, I would say, that give him too long of a leash to like, you know, kind of bullshit openly and not get kind of pushed on it. But I do feel like a lot of the public is very much like against this guy now, especially like I think the real shift for a lot of people was first the Twitter acquisition, and that kind of like, you know, pissed some people off, especially like liberals and people on the left and whatnot. But then also seeing him like get behind Trump in the way that he did. Like, I think that that also soured a lot, even more people, you know. But yeah, I don't know. It's it's been interesting to see. And, you know, you've talked about a lot of the cost there. I think you laid it out really well. And, you know, given that this is uh a climate report, um, or you know, a lot of your focus is on climate, I feel like that's another big cost to this as well, right? Is just seeing the degree to which uh climate uh policy, climate targets have really been thrown out the window in order to facilitate this industry, this build-out of data centers, you know, the fossil fuels powering them. And I wonder, you know, for you, as someone who has been working on this for so long, what you make of how quickly climate policy has kind of like fallen off the map. And and were you shocked at just how quickly this reversal has been, not just in the US, but you know, in in many other parts of uh the West at least as well.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Yeah, it it it has been quite shocking because it it felt like there was something like an elite consensus happening around, you know, maybe starting with the Paris Agreement and a lot of um climate pledges, and you know, whether that's from governments or from private actors, as we were talking about with the corporations, a lot of resources going to energy transition, a lot of attention paid to that. A lot of that has kind of just seemingly dropped away in the last few years. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that, but I think AI is a big driver of it because it's just so enticing, seemingly, that there's so much money at stake and so much potential to be made, at least in in theory. But probably a lot of people are getting rich right now already. Yeah, they that those things can just be jettisoned because this is the thing of the future, uh at least what they say or what they think. It calls into question how much some of the people making those pledges really believe or understand climate change because well, if you if you take this seriously, then you wouldn't be doing this. When there's this sort of pot of gold of AI, AGI, it's easy to like you know, go through mental hoops or mental gymnastics to justify these things. And again, like I was saying before, that just highlights why we need the public sector, why we need regulation to actually ensure these things happen and not depend on on private corporations to just do the right thing because the incentives are set up so that they don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, like our system is like working against us in very clear ways, you know, as you outlined earlier. But, you know, as so many of the discussions on the show show us very clearly. Um, now your report is not just looking at the way that the federal government has been supporting the AI industry and what the effect of that has been, but also how that power could be used in a very different way, right? Which I think is very important for us to understand because if we always just keep locked into the framework that we're given from, you know, whether it's the leader of these major companies or or political leaders that are invested in the status quo, then it can be hard to imagine something different, right? Hard to recognize that this power can be wielded differently. You know, and I feel like even the pandemic was a big wake-up call for many people on that, that, you know, the government can act fast, the government can do things in people's interests if they're really pushed to do so, right? As kind of a global health emergency did force them to do. So when you are looking at the way that the US federal government has been supporting the AI industry and this kind of project, how do you see that those levers could be used in a different way, in a more positive way, in a way that addresses the kind of climate crisis and the difficulties that a lot of people are facing in their lives today?

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Yeah, I think it's really important, like we were talking about, that there's so much resistance to AI and data centers, that we also need to think about what the alternative to this is instead of just saying, you know, we need to stop the bad thing, which again is important. What the AI bill out shows, what the AI first agenda shows, is that we can use contrary to just like decades of propaganda basically saying the government is bad, we have to shrink the government, that's a really concerted effort to benefit corporations and the wealthy, right? Which we are seeing with AI, but they're very clearly using the government. So that so the whole thing is just a con at every level because they want to use the government to their ends. Some of what they're doing, at least the tools they're using for AI build out, are not necessarily bad. Taking government stakes in companies, that could be a very useful tool for pro-social, pro-ecological ends. Like if we want to nationalize energy infrastructure and nationalize the energy grid, take stakes in companies to direct investment towards where we want to um to renewable energy, to public transit, etc. We think it's really important to highlight that the project of world-making should not be in the hands of the wealthy few, and that it should be in the hands of the working class, of the public. And the government is the main vehicle to do that. So you know, we have some recommendations like uh uh like public um public investment uh democratically planning the grid, like instead of just letting big tech and AI companies just just using the grid to facilitate their ends, like thinking using tools to like the government to think about what is what should our energy grid look like, what should our energy system look like to benefit the planet and benefit people rather than AI companies, building a grid that is designed around social priorities, centering well-paying jobs, something like a green jobs guarantee. People talked a lot about a few years ago. I think we should need to be talking about that again because even if we set aside the sort of science fiction promises that yeah, it's gonna take everyone's job, it is taking people's jobs right now, at least some people. I think it's a really important example to show that there's a lot of there's a lot of precarity in our society that we need to use the government to to prevent and ameliorate. And there's a lot of work that needs to be done if we're thinking about an energy transition, if we're thinking about repairing the biosphere and building a you know, something like a green and just society. There's a lot of work that corporations are not going to want to pay for or pay well or provide jobs with dignity, and that's something we can use the government to do. And then AI, I think there's very clearly some uses or examples of AI that should be banned, right? But when it comes to technologies and tech technological advancement like this, we need public options and public control, public regulation, so it's not just anthropic and XAI and open AI just doing kind of whatever they want. Like, and I and I don't think that necessarily taking public ownership in those companies is is even the best idea because I think we need from the ground up public alternatives that are fundamentally directed towards you know social and ecological well-being. And who knows what that could look like. We we need public technology and computing infrastructure like that. And um, I think that could really sort of prevent and um mitigate a lot of the harms we're seeing. You can imagine what inside of an AI first agenda, we had like a people and planet first agenda. And so think about that from like the highest level, where like, okay, how are we approaching the planning of our economy, the planning of our electricity grid, the planning of our the design of our cities and our land use that's actually benefiting the well-being of ecosystems, the well-being of people, first and foremost, and not not Sam Altman or Elon Musk or whoever else, right? So that's that's the way we're we're trying to think about it.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, right? And and just to pick up on a few pieces, like when you're talking about the the jobs aspect of it, right? So many of these data centers promise a lot of jobs, but it's actually just construction jobs, and then there's not very much involved in actually running it, right? You know, the community is not actually getting a lot of long term employment out of these infrastructures that are very not just capital intensive, but resource intensive, as you've been describing as well, right? And you know, you mentioned the kind of democratic planning piece of this as well. And I feel like when you talk about public technologies, obviously that's a way. For us to get a lot more into or a lot more input on kind of the development of technologies, what technologies are being put to use for the public rather than just whatever the tech industry is offering to us. But it's also why I'm quite supportive of these efforts for moratoriums on data centers, right? It feels like that is an effort, you know, however small or maybe it's not as kind of comprehensive as we would like, but at least to start to force some regulations, some expectations, to start putting some rules in place around these data centers. So it's not just the tech companies deciding for themselves what they want to do and kind of pushing the governments to do it, but you know, because the public is pushing on whether it's their local governments or their state governments to get involved here, them having to put rules in place that, you know, at least reflect some of these public demands to a certain degree in, you know, what a data center, if it does get built locally, could actually look like, how it could operate, what resources it could use, and those sorts of things, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:58

So much of this AI build-out is very has been very undemocratic and even anti-democratic. I think we can think about moratoria as an exertion of democracy against that. This is happening so like we've been talking about this has been happening so fast and to such a scale that we have to slow it down. And we have to figure out alternatives to figure out what's going on and how we can, you know, take that sort of power for alternatives and for democratic control.

SPEAKER_00 45:32

I I completely agree. And, you know, as we start to wrap up our conversation, I'm wondering about the path forward, right? You know, obviously there are a lot of forces around against us from the tech industry and their lobby and you know, everything that you've been talking about on that front, but even, you know, as you've been saying, governments that are not always acting in our interest as well, right? And are supporting what these tech companies want. And so I wonder for you what you see as you know, the path toward moving toward a framework like the one that you're laying out, and you know, what kind of hints or or you know, kind of movements in that direction you're seeing right now that can help us along uh you know in that fight or or in the achievement of that?

SPEAKER_01 46:12

The future is kind of up for grabs right now. And visions of the future, there's not really a doesn't feel like there's a lot on offer. Like I was saying earlier, it feels like the AI future is very vague and it's also doesn't sound good really. Um even like in their most like you know, their most lofty promises, like that doesn't really sound good to me. Um I think uh doesn't sound good to a lot of people. So I think there's a lot of space, and that has to be contested for like what could an alternative future look like? That's where people's needs are met, where people are not, you know, the cot people's cost of living is not going through the roof, where corporations aren't allowed to pollute with impunity, where we have renewable energy and public transit and libraries and schools and and all these sorts of uh things that I think people want and people need. What we're seeing with this data center resistance is a very interesting and potent sort of political moment of of potential of where people are fighting against these sort of undemocratic oligarchic forces, and maybe they're not always, you know, they're not always like someone who's coming at that from like a a traditional left politics perspective, but that's a that's a place where you can say, hey, this data center that that is being posed on you, well, here's who's doing that, and here's why, and here's like the negative effects, and like here's what maybe what some alternatives to be could be, and maybe that's you know, maybe the groups organizing a data center resistance could organize to for something more beneficial in their community, right? So to me that's like a place of political potential. This data center resistance, and we're seeing a lot of candidates running on that. I think I don't want to like sugarcoat it, I think it's gonna be a big challenge because as you talk about, as we've been talking about in this conversation, like the inequality in our in our society is just so enormous right now from Elon Musk briefly being the world's first trillionaire to you know increasing cost of living and um to the working class and the way that the Trump administration has just been so blazon brazenly corrupt and authoritarian. So it's a big challenge, but I do think that with the way that they've been pushing this so hard, I think it's it's a potential, there's a lot of potential for political openings here. And I think it also shows that contrary to maybe some what some people are saying right now or what we're seeing from the Trump administration's actions, that people do care a lot about the environment and and climate change. And that, you know, I I think that's one of the things people are citing the most from what I've seen with why they're resisting data centers is concerns about the environment. By doing this, they're sort of drawing attention to it. And um I think that that's a lot of space for um for us to to collectively imagine alternatives.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Yeah, I I completely agree, right? I I see a lot of hope in the movements against data centers and how much that has grown so quickly, you know, how many projects have been stopped or delayed because of it. And really to me, it just feels like the beginning, right? And I'm interested to see how it's going to affect the midterm elections, you know, these conversations around data centers and AI, um, because we've already seen it affect some elections in certain states already, right? Um, and so I do think, you know, it can often seem that these forces, as you were saying, are arrayed against us, are so powerful that we can't do anything against against it. But if we feel that way, we're just never gonna try, right? And I feel like one of the examples of these data center fights and pushbacks and and what have you, is that they have made, I think, surprising progress, you know, against an industry that is so powerful. And that it would have been very easy to say early on that, oh, you know, these people are never gonna make a difference. It's just some people in a community fighting against Meta or Amazon or what have you. But actually they have achieved quite a lot in a short period of time. And I think that could only grow, especially if you know there's some effort to kind of bring that together into something, into something bigger. So I think there's opportunity. I think there's opportunity there.

SPEAKER_01 50:25

Uh yeah, definitely. Are are you are you seeing um in Canada, is there a lot of similar things happening there?

SPEAKER_00 50:32

Absolutely. Absolutely, and we're like behind on where the United States is. You know, it's there's not as many data centers up here. The projects were being proposed later than the ones in the United States. And so we also had the benefit of then learning from what's been happening in the US. And so when people say up here, like, uh, you know, what difference are some community activists going to make to these major data center projects? You can look and say, well, look at what they did in the US, right? You know, look at how many projects have been stopped or delayed down there. And already here we're seeing discussions of moratoriums. I think the first community passed a moratorium just recently. Um, and it's it's only growing, right? And and it's not just in the US and Canada, but so many other places. Um, so yeah, I'm I'm I feel hope from that.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Yeah, that's good. Yeah. I I think I think there's a lot of there's a lot of hope if if you can if you keep your eyes open for it around this.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

And and we need hope, right? Or else we're we're not gonna get anywhere if we just feel it's all, you know, it's all over already and we can't do anything to change it. Um, Matt, it's been really great to talk to you and to have you on the show to to dig into the the report and learn more about you know some of the work that you guys at the Climate and Community Institute are doing. Um, thanks so much for taking the time. I I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Matt Haugen is research and editorial manager at the Climate and Community Institute. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with the Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Houston. Tech won't save us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening. Make sure to come back next week.