The A.I. Revolt Is Here | The Ezra Klein Show

Описание: What’s big and ugly and has united Republicans and Democrats? A.I. data centers.

An overwhelming majority of Americans say they’d oppose a data center being built near where they live. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul just imposed a one-year moratorium on data center construction, and there are over 100 other local or statewide moratorium proposals across the country. A.I.’s explosive momentum over the last few years seems to have finally run into a force that could slow it down: the messy politics of getting things done in the real world.

So, is that a good thing, or a bad thing? And how much is the data center backlash about the actual construction of these buildings, and how much is it about A.I. itself?

Jasmine Sun has an excellent newsletter covering both the culture inside the A.I. companies and the anger that’s been building against them. And she just finished a reporting trip in the Midwest, where she interviewed people on all sides of the data center fight. So I wanted to talk to her about what she saw and what she thinks A.I. companies can learn from the growing movement against them.

00:00:00 Political unity against A.I. data centers
00:04:04 Who opposes data centers?
00:08:35 Data centers' true environmental impact
00:22:42 Is A.I. an elite political project?
00:26:02 When big tech sues local democracy
00:30:15 A.I’.s hypocrisy and job displacement fears
00:33:17 Will A.I. create a permanent underclass?
00:46:06 The strange bedfellows of A.I. opposition
00:50:06 Data center bans: Shifting problems
00:52:40 Geopolitical leverage and compute inequality
00:56:56 China's unique A.I. perspective
01:04:49 A.I. industry's response to public anger
01:12:52 Silicon Valley wakes up to politics

Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/op...

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