Bernie Sanders Takes on Data Centers

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1:34The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Just about everybody in America seems to be up in arms about AI data centers. Everybody except for the diehard AI boosters, the tech moguls themselves, and of course, this guy. You have to convince your community how great these things. You can't fight it. You have to go with it. And you're going to have all that protection, and we're giving you automatic protection. But you're going to make a tremendous amount of money. You're going to reduce taxes. and you're going to have something that if you don't have it, everybody else wants it.

2:15What's wrong with data centers? Even the simplest AI queries require quite a lot of computing power. So the data centers to house all those processors are gigantic. They consume vast amounts of electricity and water. One proposed data center in Utah, just one, would need over 16 billion gallons of water a year. That's the estimate. And that's in a state suffering from a chronic drought. New York has passed a moratorium on data centers, and 14 other states have considered similar restrictions. The anger about data center construction is rising in towns and counties all over the country. And on today's program, I'm joined by a leader of that opposition, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

3:01Now, Sanders has brought legislation to the Senate that calls for a moratorium on data centers nationwide. It's not a ban. It's a temporary freeze on new construction, and it allows for more research and more government input. It hasn't been voted on yet. That is why today we are announcing legislation to impose a moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers until strong national safeguards are in place. Sanders has been very concerned about artificial intelligence, mainly because of the threat it poses to many kinds of jobs. And last week, you sent a letter to the CEOs of the major AI companies, telling them to, quote, avoid disaster, stop building machines that humans cannot control.

3:51How are you? I'm great. Senator Sanders, welcome to the Radio Hour. Thank you. Back in March, almost a half a year ago, you and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put forward the AI Data Center Moratorium Act. What led to your action? Well, a couple of fundamental reasons. Number one, it was clear to us that these very large big tech corporations owned by some of the wealthiest people in the world were just shoving their way through small communities and are doing significant environmental damage, raising electric rates, threatening scarce water supplies in some cases. and I thought it was important to make it clear that that was unacceptable.

4:43But in addition to that, I was worried, and I think Alexandria is as well, that this AI and robotics revolution is moving so, so quickly. It is so transformative that we have got to slow it down. It is going to impact every man, woman, and child. And I got involved in this, to be honest with you, not because I'm a tech nerd, but because I looked around me and I said, wait a minute. This stuff is moving lightning fast. And who is standing up and saying, what is this impact going to mean? What is it going to mean to workers, to our environment, to our kids, to our privacy, to our democracy? What is it going to mean in terms of the possibility of an existential threat if AI becomes smarter than human beings?

5:34So I'm asking these questions. I'm reading stuff. I'm talking to people. And I go down to the floor of the Senate. Virtually no serious discussion. So I think the most important point is slow it down. We've got to make AI and robotics work for ordinary people, not just to make Elon Musk and Zuckerberg even richer than they are. So the point is not just to slow down the construction of data centers and the potential damage they do in terms of the environment, water, as you mentioned, electrical bills. It's also to slow the process entirely. Who are you talking to? What kind of information are you getting about AI and its dangers and what you may see as its benefits as well?

6:15And who should decide these questions? I have talked to a whole lot of people. A number of months ago, I went to California where I talked to a lot of these guys, very smart guys. I talked to Mr. Hinton, Dr. Hinton, who is, as you know, one of the godfathers, Jeffrey Hinton, one of the godfathers of AI. We did a town meeting at Georgetown. and he told me, he said, look, set it up. AI will sooner or later become smarter than human beings. And it is then likely that human beings will lose control over AI, which could be an existential threat to the planet. And you know, David, what you're seeing, what have we seen in the last week?

7:06We have seen from open AI, we've seen from Anthropic, we've seen from Meta that they have lost control of some of their models that have hacked into other entities. So you've got all of these threats there, and we cannot allow Mr. Musk and a handful of multibillionaires to determine the future of humanity. You mentioned you talked to Jeffrey Hinton, who has profiled at great length in The New Yorker, and you're absolutely right. He was a godfather of AI in some senses and also one of the people who stand up now to talk in warning about it. Do you ever talk to the Zuckerbergs and the Musks and those kind of people to get their input?

7:47I talked to Altman. Yeah? I talked to Altman. That's a conversation I would love to have been a fly on the wall for. Tell me about your conversation with Sam Altman. It wasn't all that exciting. Altman is, I think, a very good salesman. Uh-huh. He is, you know, he's selling his product. What did he say to you? You know, what he says is that, I mean, literally, I think the same day or day before or later, he was to see Donald Trump. So the idea that he goes to see Trump, he goes to see Sanders. Wow, that's great, you know. He's talking to everybody. But I think, you know, what he wants to do, I think he's talking about as Trump is, well, we're going to have American share in the wealth and we're going to give them 5 % of our profits and so forth and so on.

8:27And that's kind of what he was talking about. Meanwhile, OpenAI and the other AI entities are spending huge amounts of money in campaign contributions through their super PAC to make sure that Congress does not do what should be done. But, David, here's the bottom line to me. Take a deep breath. Take a look at what AI and robotics can do economically in terms of displacing millions and millions of workers. Okay? That's a fact. Now, no one knows exactly what the rollout is, when, how, what. It will displace millions of workers. Are we prepared for that? No, we are not. It will have an emotional impact on the mental health of our kids.

9:13All right? You got kids now who are spending 5, 10 hours a day on their screens. You have 40 % of kids age 2 and younger who have tablets now. All right? This is re-altering the brains of our kids. Reading skills are declining. Writing skills are declining. Cognitive capabilities are declining. AI will only exacerbate that, I think, make it worse. Privacy rights. Hey, go to the doctor's office. Go to the, you know, have a bank account. Send out an email. Somebody will know what you are doing. What are we going to do about that? Protect privacy rights. Democracy. I don't know if you've had that experience.

9:54I've had the experience. Deep fakes. You know what a deep fake is? Of course. All right. They do it really well. Somebody could take me on your show right now and transform every word that I said, right? And people said, why did Bernie Sanders say that? Why does he say how much he loves Donald Trump? I'm surprised to hear that. How the hell are we going to know the difference, what is true and what is false? I think you're probably hearing Senator Sanders in conversations with people like Sam Altman, that if the United States acts too slowly, then the Chinese will win the AI revolution. Can I guess that that was one of the things he said to you?

10:34Yeah, it was. And, you know, that's the usual line. Although I am very happy to tell you, a number of months ago, I did a public meeting here on Capitol Hill in the visiting center. We had hundreds of people coming out. You know what we did? We had two leading AI scientists from the United States and two scientists from China, beaming in. And boy, did I get criticized for that. Imagine having American scientists talking to Chinese scientists. And of course, that is going on all the time anyhow. But we made it public. We had this public meeting. And I'm happy to say that, or maybe we should be scared, that even the Trump administration, which criticized me for that meeting, is now planning to meet with the Chinese because of what I suspect are legitimate concerns about existential threats, which takes me back to an issue again.

11:28Literally, in the last couple of weeks, we have had AI models breaking away from human control. That's just for the last few weeks. David, that is now. Understood. If we don't deal with this stuff, what's going to be the case next year, five years from now? You've also proposed an American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. I did. Talk to me about that. How would that play a role in the effort you're describing? Two important factors there, one more important than the other. The first is the foundation of AI is human knowledge, right? The discussion that you and I are having this very moment will end up on the Internet, will end up within the AI world.

12:17It'll be part of the zillions of other aspects of human knowledge, et cetera, et cetera. It strikes me that if we as human beings create the foundation of what AI stands on, the people who do it should get benefits, financial benefits from that. And that's what a sovereign wealth fund would do. If AI profits, as I suspect it will, I want the American people to benefit from that, not just Mr. Musk and Mr. Zuckerberg. Second of all, more importantly, when we have 50 % ownership of the major AI companies, which is what the Sovereign Fund does, what it does is put public representation on the boards of every major company.

13:08So if a company comes forward and says, you know, we got this great idea, companies want it, we can eliminate 5 million jobs in the next year, somebody in the public will say, sorry, that is not what you can do. The public will have a voice there, be able to stop bad things, stop the undermining of our democracy, et cetera, et cetera. So the two goals of that one, more importantly, have the public represented on these AI companies to stop bad things from happening. Second of all, to the degree that money is being made, I want AI profits to benefit ordinary Americans, not just Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos.

13:47One of the alarming aspects, and there are many about data centers, is that local and state officials have been signing nondisclosure agreements in deals with data and AI companies. For example, the governor of Louisiana is reported to have signed an NDA with Meta, Mark Zuckerberg's outfit, on a$50 billion data center campus. Is it legal for government officials to sign an NDA? What is the existence of these NDAs signal to you? Well, David, we're living in a moment. We're living in a moment. The law is not all that relevant anymore. We have a president who kind of doesn't believe in the constitution or the rule of law.

14:24I'm afraid his views have spread down to other Republicans. But what I would say, whether it's legal or not, I don't know. What I would say is if you're a small town, all right, and you got some volunteer members of the board of selectmen, right? These are guys who work for a living. They come to a meeting once a week. They volunteer at a time. And suddenly you got some multi-zillion dollar company with 18 lawyers and accountants coming in and say, we have a deal for you. And all you got to do is sign right here. And you're going to get, you know, money for, you know, property tax relief or schools or whatever you want.

14:58Just sign right here. These ordinary people taking on some of the largest corporations in the world. Not quite a fair fight. But what we have seen in the last many months, it's quite unbelievable, is you've seen a grassroots resistance that I think the big tech oligarchs never expected. That's what I want to ask you. How much is this picking up steam as an issue? God knows there's such a range of issues in this Trump era to focus on, on the left or anywhere else. How much has data centers picked up steam as a galvanizing issue? Yeah, you're absolutely right. There are a million issues that are out there.

15:40I mean, every day my office is dealing with 10 different issues. But I think what AI and these data centers have done has given people who often feel powerless, you know, what are they going to do about oligarchy in America? What are they going to do about a corrupt campaign finance system or the health care collapse in America? But you know what? Some company wants to come in and destroy your local environment. You know what? We can fight back. And boy, I'm sure you've seen some of these videos of local people taking on their poor little city councils. My God, mayors getting thrown out of office, all that stuff.

16:19I think people feel some sense of empowerment that they can actually stop something. But I think also, and maybe I'm wrong in this, but I don't think I am. What folks are saying is, look, I don't want this colossus to be in my backyard. It's ugly. It's disgusting. It's taking farmland. It's destroying our environment, water, electric rates, noise, heat, all that stuff. That's real. But I think in the back of the minds of many of these folks, and by the way, they are conservatives. They are progressives. They are moderates. There's something else going on. They're saying, what the hell are we doing?

16:57What is this going to contribute to? Is this going to result in my kid not being able to have a job? is this going to result in, you know, my not having any privacy? Why am I aiding these large corporations owned by the wealthiest people in the world who could care less about me? Let's stand up.

17:23I'm speaking with Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont. We'll continue this conversation in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

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22:20This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking today with Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders consistently polls as one of the most popular politicians in the country, and he's taken up a cause that cuts across party lines. Resistance to data centers that are being built all across the United States. Sanders has been in Congress since 1991, so he saw the rise of the Internet from the vantage point of Capitol Hill. And I wanted to ask him about how the government has dealt with disruptive innovation in the past. How is this different from other historical instances in which there's rapid technological change?

22:59I don't mean, you know, horse and buggy movement, but the rise of the automobile, the rise of electricity, the rise of the Internet. But I have to tell you, Senator Sanders, when I would watch congressional hearings about the internet, I did not have any great faith in our elected representatives and their knowledge of what the internet was about. This was exemplified by watching a member, I don't remember if it was a senator or congressman, I believe it was a senator, asking the head of Facebook how they made money, not understanding a thing about these technologies. And they sounded like, you'll forgive me, the way my kids treat me with technology or I would have treated my parents with a certain kind of, you know, eyebrow-lifted condescension.

23:46And then they just went to town and did whatever the hell they wanted. And it resulted in one of the great transformations of human consciousness and behavior in the history of civilization. And it wasn't at all tempered by the efforts of our elected legislators. I mean, you're discussing a very significant reality. The way I see it is that you have this extraordinarily transformational technology. You know, you talked about electricity. We can talk about the Industrial Revolution, profound impacts. But it took place over a period of years. I think the difference about this one, David, it is moving much more rapidly than any other technological change.

24:32And it's going to impact us in every aspect of our life. Who we are as human beings and how we relate to each other, not to mention the economy and privacy and democracy and all the rest of that stuff. Number two, and then you pose a real concern. This is pretty complicated stuff, you know? And I can absolutely guarantee you that most members of the United States Senate are not, you know, steeped in the kind of knowledge that, in fact, we should have. And I include myself in that. You do. This is very complicated stuff. But I think at the least that we can do is call upon those people who do know what the impact of AI and robotics will be to help us design guardrails, which makes certain that these technologies work for ordinary people, not just enrich the very rich.

25:31That seems to me the goal that we've got to achieve. I gather you recently met with Aaron Marakovich to talk about data centers. What was that conversation? Like, probably different than with Sam Altman. Yeah, very different. She's an heroic figure. And I think she expressed to me a real surprise. I think she got into this kind of fairly recently, that people started calling her from all over the country. They were conservatives. They were progressives. And they said, we need help in organizing, in stopping these data centers, which are going to have such a destructive impact on our communities.

26:05I like Erin a whole lot. But considering the complexity and the technological nature of the question we were just talking about, does that also signal to you that it's time for a change of generations in the Senate, in the Congress, in the presidency as well? Well, there's always folks who are saying, you know what we need to change the country? We need more young people. We need more blacks. We need more gays. We need more women. We need more this. And I believe in all that stuff. And I've probably done as much as anybody in the United States Senate to get young people involved in the political process with some success.