A.I. Vs. Eh, I’m Walkin’ ‘Ere!

0:03Hello and happy Friday, Slatesters. This is the moment when we go off the record just for you, our Slate Plus friends and neighbors. If you're listening to this, you're a Slate Plus member. We love you, etc., etc. Over in the regular What Next Universe, we have talked about Todd Blanche. We've talked about Gerontocracy. and my favorite story of the moment, explosive diarrhea. We've been talking about the cyclospora outbreak that is not funny and yet saying the word diarrhea is unfortunately very funny. But we're not talking about any of those today. I hope we're not talking about any of those today, Tish.

0:46I did find out a friend of mine in Michigan did get the virus. It's a parasite. It's a parasite, not a virus. Parasite, yes. Thank you for correcting me. He is pretty much fine, though. Like he said, he just had mild symptoms, thankfully, and didn't find out until getting tested. So just offering that anecdote out there. I am going to Michigan soon, and I am extremely worried about it. Yeah. There will be no lettuce. I will have no lettuce in Michigan. But that is not what we're talking about today. We're not. Natish Pahwa, we are here to talk to you about business, technology, the things you cover, not diarrhea.

1:22Welcome back, Tish. Thank you so much, Lizzie. Always happy to be here. Thank you. All right. So today, actually, we are here to talk about data centers. The big news this week, Governor Kathy Hochul of this state that we are currently in, New York, surprised us, frankly, with an announcement of a first-of-its-kind data center moratorium here in the Empire State. Let's lay it out. Say what's going on here, Tish. Talk me through it. Absolutely. Yeah. So this was an interesting situation because the legislature in Albany had passed by pretty commanding majorities a temporary pause on data centers and had sent it to the governor's desk.

2:12Right now, she's going through her normal cycle of deciding which bill she wants to sign, veto, etc. And instead of signing the legislature's bill, she decided to go with her own executive order. The explanation from her office was that the bill that made it to her was a little too complex and perhaps a little too constricting. And so for her, she kept this executive order, a pretty simple, no permits for new data center projects for a year. And it's that use 50 or more megawatts of power, right? Exactly. So those are the quote unquote hyperscale data centers that have really been the bulk of concern.

3:02And yeah, I mean, it's the first of its kind, as you said, to actually be enacted at the state level. There was a bill that made it to the governor's desk in Maine, but was vetoed ultimately. And the reactions have been interesting. Obviously, there are a lot of New Yorkers and New York advocacy groups that are very happy about it. The president is not happy about it. He says that data centers are, quote, money machines and thinks that New York needs to change course. And a lot of people in Congress who either support data centers generally in AI or are real China hawks are saying this is bad news.

3:46This means China is going to win the data center race. Josh Gottheimer, John Fetterman, you know, some of the usual suspects are the ones behind that talking point. And of course, you're seeing criticism of it, you know, in other circles. But for the most part, I think New Yorkers are very satisfied with this decision. And it's definitely served already as a bit of a wake up call to the tech industry with regard to the data center rush. There was a item in Politico a couple of days ago about how some folks from like data center advocacy groups are like, yeah, if it can happen in a state like New York, it could happen probably anywhere.

4:33That's it for now. And if you want to hear the rest of this episode, the way to do it is to subscribe to Slate Plus. Unlock Slate Plus now by going to slate.com forward slash what next plus.