The AI election

0:00Astead Herndon:AI panic is everywhere. Artificial intelligence is taking over. Robots from open AI hacking into another company. The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. But where is that panic really coming from? According to a poll from the New York Times and Siena, only 1 % of voters listed artificial intelligence or data centers as their most important voting issue. I'm an old school person. I don't care about AI. You're saying that doesn't matter. That doesn't register for you. And sometimes I wonder if the freak out about rogue AI systems and super intelligence is something that's only consuming us here on the coast.

0:41Astead Herndon:Do they care about AI in so-called real America? What people in my district are saying is we think the risks outweigh the benefits. This week on America Actually, I'm talking to Michigan congressional candidate Will Lawrence, a political activist turned politician. on why he shaped his entire campaign around confronting the AI revolution. Let's dig in.

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1:52Astead Herndon:Now, over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices. Every plan to just$15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Artificial intelligence has gotten so much attention this cycle. First, it was data centers, which we covered early on back in New Jersey. Can you just give us a sense of, like, what we're outside right now?

2:23Astead Herndon:This is the new data center in Vineland, New Jersey. We're here in Cumberland. Everyone hates automated license plate readers. And flock cameras have become so unpopular that Democratic and Republican communities are backtracking from their commitments with them. We already know that AI is broadly unpopular in polling. But to what extent is it a voter priority? And what can even be done at this point? To help us understand, I've invited Will Lawrence, the Democratic candidate for Michigan's Battleground 7th Congressional District, to talk about the politics of AI. For most of his life, Will was an activist.

3:00Astead Herndon:He co-founded the Sunrise Movement, the environmental activist group known for its civil disobedience. And he was considered a long-shot candidate for his primary. But he won through a focus on data centers. But what we know right now is that it's being used to make the rich and powerful still richer and more powerful. Lawrence called for a 12-month moratorium on building data centers in Michigan, and his supporters chanted data centers lost at his victory party. Like a lot of the left, Will has evolved with the time. And these days, he talks a little bit less about climate change and more about combating big tech.

3:37Astead Herndon:He joins me for this episode in New York. Well, Lawrence, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me here. Part of the reason we wanted to talk to you is because I think what you've been up to out in Michigan has been so interesting. But we want to start kind of with your political career before. You have a long history of activism. We just paid in protests early in high school. We were arrested for chaining yourself to an oil pipeline. How did you catch the activism bug? So I'm a millennial. I'm 36. So, you know, war broke out when I was just entering middle school and seemed like a big problem.

4:09I was like, why are we blowing each other up? I learned about climate change. I grew up in Michigan, loving the lakes, loving our water, and learned about how that was being polluted and how we were also polluting the whole climate. So these seemed like big problems to me when I was a young person. And I felt like maybe human nature was the problem and I needed to drop out of society and go live in the woods or something. You had that. That was the original thought. I had that thought, yeah, when I was in high school. But, you know, then I met people who introduced me to organizing and, you know, social movements.

4:37And I learned that, okay, there have been bad times throughout our history. Sometimes, you know, bad people get a lot of power and they use it to do bad. But there are people who are working to do better who are fighting from the bottom up. And that just really gave me my meaning and my purpose in my life. I was like, okay, I want to be one of those people.

4:53Astead Herndon:I mean, there's a lot of high schoolers who have that thought. Not all of them are training themselves to oil. Well, this was a few years later. That was when I was like 20. So I'm saying, what's the step between that kind of value recognition and the action, which a lot of folks don't take? So I was involved in clubs and stuff in high school, but I really didn't have a sense of like, you know, a purpose, a vocation, a direction. It was when I went to college, I met people who had, you know, gotten on the bus down to Mississippi in 1964 to register African-Americans to vote and pass the Voting Rights Act.

5:20Heard the stories about the Flint sit-down strike in 1937. The women who went on hunger strike in the 1910s to earn the right to vote. And those stories and then learning that actually we can organize proactively together, that, again, gave me my direction. And then we got very involved in actually a divestment campaign at our college to divest from oil and gas companies, which I got started with that in 2010. And then we worked to unite other students around the country working on that same issue. And then one thing led to another.

5:48Astead Herndon:I want to track kind of the progressive movement from climate change even up until now. But let's kind of start with your congressional run. I mean, when you announced your run for Congress, did you think you would spend this much time talking about AI, talking about data centers? I sure didn't because I got into the race last August and it really wasn't something many people were talking about. But it was in October that I started getting calls from residents, first in Howell Township and then in Lyon Township and then in Mason, all of which are in my district, where hyperscale data centers were proposed.

6:20And people said, there's this thing going on. It smells fishy. Some of our officials seem like they've signed nondisclosure agreements, and we don't like it. And so, you know, I spent my career fighting back against corporate power, standing alongside regular people. So it made sense that I would be there to listen to them and then stand alongside them.

6:37Astead Herndon:I wonder what those initial conversations were like. You know, we went to New Jersey to hear about kind of a town hall of people being opposed to data centers. And I got to say the concerns were varied, right? Some of it was environmental. Some of it was about electricity prices. Some of it was about a process that they feel like we're leaving them out. What were you hearing? Yeah. It's all those things. It's the concerns about water usage, energy bills, property values, noise pollution, light pollution, concern about all those things. But really it's about control, I think, above all. Who decides?

7:09Because people feel like they just are not really given any say-so in the whole matter. There's these companies with hundreds of billions of dollars from Silicon Valley and Wall Street. They come in, they sign the local officials to NDAs, and then it's like the decision has already been made and people have just got to grin and bear it. And they say, we don't trust you. We don't trust you to do right by our town.

7:29Astead Herndon:You called for a 12-month moratorium on data centers back in October of 2025. I imagine as you were hearing some of these things, you were one of the first kind of national politicians or ones running in a national race to do so. Why is moratorium the right answer to this? Because I think trust is the fundamental thing we're lacking. That's why you're seeing, I mean, again, across the board, it's Democrats, it's independent Republicans. We don't have any trust that this is going to work out in our best interest. And there needs to be a moment of saying, we're going to pause as a society. These data centers are deeply unpopular.

8:01AI now, people are raising the alarm, whistleblowers about existential risks in AI. And even the known risks are that there's going to be millions of people put out of work. I mean, I'm not somebody who believes that the AI is just a total bubble or that there's nothing happening here, that technology is not capable. Obviously, it is very capable and getting more so every day. We need to ensure that this is actually going to benefit everybody rather than allowing the rich and powerful to get richer and more powerful. I think the pause is important symbolically and practically to say, okay, we recognize that there are major concerns here.

8:33We're going to put a pause on this, and we're going to have an all-of-society conversation about how to negotiate an AI benefits compact. How is it that the data sitters and the AI are going to be for the common good?

8:43Astead Herndon:But I feel like the tension point is the speed at which it's developing. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said, if we don't do them here, they'll be done elsewhere. They'll be done less smart with lower wages in the way that abuses natural resources and jacks up energy prices. She's basically making an argument about the inevitability of this technology and that Michigan should have a place in shaping that. Why is that wrong? Well, you know, this is the logic of a race to the bottom. And this is the place, you know, if you don't have a steady hand from the federal government, states can get pitted against each other in a race to the bottom.

9:15Who's going to have the lowest environmental standards, labor standards, and do this in the cheapest and most harmful way? That's why we need a federal moratorium so that we can put national standards in place and ensure that nobody is going to be sacrificed for the sake of building these data centers. And if they are built, the benefits will go to all of us.

9:33Astead Herndon:But I guess I just want to ask about the solution one more time. I mean, it would seem to me that, and I've heard arguments made, that something like a moratorium doesn't work unless there's international cooperation, unless U.S. brings those type of partners in. Is that what you're talking about? I do think we need to have international agreements. Those conversations are already beginning and they should continue. And we've done this before, you know, with nuclear nonproliferation. We patched the hole in the ozone layer. We're able to come together when there is sufficient urgency and clarity on the stakes of the problem to be able to make international agreements.

10:03And we do need something like that in this issue. Do you say I? I wouldn't say I. I don't use it like on a weekly basis, but I have used it for the sake of, you know, research and honestly to try to understand the capacity of the tools. I mean, I was watching, you know, starting, you know, maybe early last year. I was like, OK, is this the third industrial revolution? Is this a machine god in the making? Is this a mass psychosis event? You were on your own investigative journey. Yeah, I was thinking like, OK, what is really – is this a massive economic bubble or is this somehow all of the above?

10:33And, you know, really genuinely curious about that. Is this all it's been cracked up to be or is it just delusion?

10:39Astead Herndon:And you hear people argue these different sides. There's specifically arguments from the left that this is a bubble waiting to burst, a technology that is more so for a group of insiders than will have a kind of mass societal effect. Is there danger in that type of marginalization? You know, I think that it could be – there could be bubbles and there could be a bust and it could still be a world-changing technology. I mean look at railroads. You know, railroads had a huge boom and bust cycle, overinvestment, crashes. A lot of companies went under over the course of the railroad boom. railroads still revolutionized the American economy, and AI could be the same way.

11:14Astead Herndon:I also wanted to ask about flock cameras. You called them the most un-American thing ever and said the public safety benefits don't outweigh the privacy concerns. Now, again, we've heard that across the country. I didn't agree with that personally even maybe. But let me put my devil's advocate hat on. I mean, we already have red light cameras. We already have CCTV in, like, you know, high urban density areas. We have facial recognition at the airport, at Madison Square Garden here in New York. Like, hasn't the privacy ship sailed? We've got the Patriot Act and we've had it for 25 years. It feels to me like this might have already taken too many steps.

11:48It can never be too late to fight back against this unconstitutional breach of our privacy. I mean, Thomas Jefferson would be rolling over in his grave right now. For many reasons. For many reasons. For many reasons. But, you know, one of them that I think is a strong thing in our national heritage, There's a real suspicion of concentrated power at the top of big business and government. That's exactly what this is. And the potential for abuse, the already demonstrated existence of abuse, people stalking their exes, I mean, all kinds of ridiculous use cases that we should never be seeing. This has to be put to a stop.

12:22Don't tread on me and don't spy on me. That's what we say.

12:24Astead Herndon:So is the idea that this type of pause, whether it's on data centers or rethinking like how we enter our smart future, then just allows more people to be shareholders, whether it be financially or in terms of control? Like, or should we see it as, you know, a vision to really put us on a different type of track? I guess I'm wondering, like, is it a pause to then re-return to embracing this emerging technology? Or are you advocating for these things as a way of rejecting the technology? So let's just say, okay, let's consider that this is the third industrial revolution, as some of the promoters have said.

13:00As some believe. Yeah. If it is the third industrial revolution, we shouldn't want to see an entire generation lost to the economic dislocation of that transition as happened in the first industrial revolution. We should want to see a relatively stable and very prosperous economy in which people are not left behind. People have good work. People have the right to retire. People's health care is made whole. We also should be very concerned about some of the downside impacts of AI for things like our education. I'm very concerned about AI being pushed into schools, especially at the elementary school level.

13:36I mean, you had the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, saying recently, it's like, these kids will sit down with AI for hours. It's great. You couldn't ask for a better teacher. That is crazy. Critical thinking is under threat. Literacy, basic reading and writing is under threat. If you think there was learning loss during the pandemic, we could have that much worse generational learning loss if we just allow this to continue unregulated. So that's why I think we need to have a conversation about the economic benefits, ensure that we have some kind of benefits compact, some kind of new deal for the 21st century that ensures that if this is the third industrial revolution, we're going to have it lift all boats rather than just a few.

14:12And then there is a very important question about what needs to be maintained to the domain of the human and not the machine. Where do humans retain control? Where do humans retain control? Exactly. How do we keep humanity at the center and put the tools to work for us rather than the other way around?

14:27Astead Herndon:Part of the reason we wanted to talk to you is because it can sometimes sound like this is a little bit of a coastal panic, a white collar panic. New York Times Siena polling would tell us that less than 1 % of voters put AI and data centers as their top priority. What is the disconnect between your focus about this in your campaign and the numbers we're seeing like that? Because it would seem as if those two things don't add up. I mean, I can't speak for anywhere else, but in our district, it's been a huge issue. Of course, it's most acute in the places that are closest to the data centers, but it's also very acute among young people who are exposed to the job market right now, who are dealing with AI hiring agents, having to submit dozens, if not hundreds of job applications just to get an interview.

15:06So I think everybody understands that they wouldn't want to get that same treatment.

15:09Astead Herndon:After the break, we talk to Lawrence about the wins and the losses of the wider progressive movement.

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17:38Astead Herndon:Upfront payment of$45 for three months, $90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. We've seen the kind of progressive movement embrace this issue fighting back against big tech, particularly after 2024. It kind of represents an evolution from several issues that they've made over the last several years. And I wanted to ask you about that. You started back in Sunrise, and were at the forefront of a young progressive movement that was aligned at that time in 2019-18, and I think still is with progressive members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

18:13Astead Herndon:I remember reporting about Sunrise at the time. The goal was to elect a Bernie Sanders, but the other goal was to have the party largely embrace things like a Green New Deal. How would you grade the efforts of the climate movement of that time looking back? Well, I think we did some things very well. I mean, we put climate jobs and justice on top of the agenda for the incoming Biden administration. I think the Bernie-Biden task force is often overlooked but very important chapter of that whole story where Bernie and Biden both understood they had to bring their people to the table. And that's how Build Back Better got negotiated.

18:46And then, you know, we fought hard for Build Back Better and ultimately came up to vote shy in the United States Senate. Do you see that as a success or a failure of the climate movement, of the progressive movement? I think Build Back Better was a success in coming to the table and negotiating from the Green New Deal to Build Back Better. And then what we ended up with was the Inflation Reduction Act after it passed the final filter. So, look, at the time and now, how I felt about it was this is historic. This is the largest investment in green jobs and infrastructure in United States history.