Data Centers at the Crossroads

Yeah.

Uh, thank you for having me.

And Joshua, it's great to chat with you here.

Um, I wanna start off a little bit by talking about what data centers actually are.

Um, as we know, data centers are the physical infrastructure underpinning, uh, the digital economy, and the reason why this is very important now is because they're increasingly being built to fuel the artificial intelligence boom.

Uh, so u-un- understandably, data centers are bringing together a lot of constituencies that haven't actually been brought together in the past, and this is causing some controversy.

So data centers, as large buildings that are very energy intensive, um, and require little human, uh, capital to be in the office, um, they're being sited a lot in rural areas.

But the end product, the artificial intelligence and the digital services, are mainly, at this time, being used and tinkered with by people in Silicon Valley.

So there's a little bit of tension here between rural interests, uh, who are actually getting the data center construction and other people who are far away in distant places who are actually using the technology.

I think that data centers should be encouraged, um, for many reasons, and I think that this seemingly, uh, large divide that is growing politically can be bridged if we think about this in economic terms.

So artificial intelligence isn't the only thing that is, uh, using a data center.

Obviously, our email and basically every software that we use on a daily basis is being fueled by data centers and compute.

Um, artificial is just kind of the next generation of our digital infrastructure.

Artificial intelligence can be used to essentially inject productivity and efficiency gains into nearly every single sector.

Uh, so healthcare, finances, and basically every service that we use today can be made more efficient through artificial intelligence.

I think that where the controversy really comes down is that rural communities feel like they're being exploited, per se, for a technology that won't benefit them.

Maybe people are deciding that they don't want to use AI or they don't know how it'll affect them.

Um, I think that taking a step back and realizing that AI is kind of like the railroad build-out, the internet dot-com bubble, and other massive economic transformations that simply increase productivity and increase efficiency throughout the economy is a much more useful way to look at AI than the chatbots and the potentially, uh, unsatisfying user interfaces that we have today.

So I think that data center growth, uh, growth and development should be encouraged.

Um, I don't think that taxpayer funds should encourage this growth, but I do think that a light regulatory touch and a generally hands-off approach to allow private sector actors to build what they want to build is, uh, is called for in this area.

And Joshua, I'll kick it off to you now.