Entering a New Chapter in the Debate on AI Policy

And then on your question, so, you know, I, I have not seen the news in Thailand, but I did see the news in New York, which is pretty interesting.

And as your listeners, our listeners may know, New York, uh, now has a moratorium on data center development for the next year.

Uh, the governor of New York, uh, Governor Hochul, uh, just put into effect an executive order that's, that, uh, suspends the development of data centers for a full year.

And I think here's an observation about this, David.

I-- The politics of this issue has shifted more quickly than any issue I can recall.

So I, I did a study last year on legislative activity on data centers around the United States, uh, in state, in state ca- capitals.

And we published this, the, the results in December of last year, seven months ago.

And what we found seven months ago was that most activity related to data centers and state capitals had to do with providing tax incentives and encouraging data centers to come to the state.

That was just last year.

The politics have shifted dramatically, and, and now we're in a state where twen- seventy-one percent of the American public, according to a recent poll, opposes data center development.

It's broadly bipartisan.

It's bubbling up with a lot of energy in a lot of communities.

And Governor Hochul, who is up for re-election in November, has become the first governor in the nation to sign an executive order to ban for a year the development of data centers.

It's a pretty dramatic development.

Well, yeah.

I mean, you know, I think one of the interesting things is that data centers, frankly, that AI, which, you know, four years ago in an election would've been seen as extraneous, is so central and so local.

And I think data centers are what have made the issue local, and there are states across the country looking at this.

There's a story in Politico today.

I know you would never read such things.

But, uh, there's a story in Politico today, um, about how, uh- Anthrope, Anthropic and OpenAI are taking their case to the states.

Uh, whereas Anthropic is saying, um, "We want the states to come up with their own strong safety legislation," 'cause that's their thing and their position.

A lot of people there left OpenAI because they didn't think they were strong enough on safety issues.

Whereas OpenAI is sort of saying, "Hey, let's get everybody on the same page," and, you know, they're kind of, you know, sort of talking it down.

But I think the important thing about this is they wouldn't be doing it if this was not a front-of-mind issue in states across the country, and they felt like they, you know, they might...

You know, if they wait too long, they're, they're, they're, they're gonna be overtaken by events.