Bernie Sanders Takes on Data Centers

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David Remnick: Just about everybody in America seems to be up in arms about AI data centers. Everybody except for the die-hard AI boosters, the tech moguls themselves, and, of course, this guy.

President Donald Trump: You have to convince your community how great these things. You can't fight it, you have to go with it. 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.

David Remnick: What's wrong with data centers? Even the simplest AI queries require quite a lot of computing power. 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. 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. On today's program, I'm joined by a leader of that opposition, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Now, 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. It allows for more research and more government input. It hasn't been voted on yet.

Senator Bernie Sanders: 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.

David Remnick: Sanders has been very concerned about artificial intelligence, mainly because of the threat it poses to many kinds of jobs. Last week he sent a letter to the CEOs of the major AI companies telling them to "avoid disaster, stop building machines that humans cannot control."

Senator Bernie Sanders: How are you?

David Remnick: I'm great. Senator Sanders, welcome to the Radio Hour.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Thank you.

David Remnick: 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?

Senator Bernie Sanders: There are 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 doing significant environmental damage, raising electric rates, threatening scarce water supplies in some cases. I thought it was important to make it clear that that was unacceptable.

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. 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. 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?'"

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. I think the most important point is slow it down. We got to make AI and robotics work for ordinary people, not just to make Elon Musk and Zuckerberg even richer than they are.

David Remnick: 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 information are you getting about AI and its dangers, and what you may see as its benefits as well? Who should decide these questions?

Senator Bernie Sanders: 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, Geoffrey Hinton, one of the godfathers of AI. We did a town meeting at Georgetown, and he told me, he said, "Look, Senator, AI will sooner or later become smarter than human beings. It is then likely that human beings will lose control over AI, which could be an existential threat to the planet."

David, what you're seeing-- What have we seen in the last week? We have seen from OpenAI, 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. You got all of these threats there. We cannot allow Mr. Musk and a handful of multi-billionaires to determine the future of humanity.

David Remnick: You mentioned you talked to Geoffrey Hinton, who is 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?

Senator Bernie Sanders: I talked to Altman. He was here.

David Remnick: That's a conversation I would love to have been a fly in the wall for. Tell me about your conversation with Sam Altman.

Senator Bernie Sanders: It wasn't all that exciting. Altman is, I think, a very good salesman. He's selling his product. He wants to get--

David Remnick: What did he say to you?

Senator Bernie Sanders: What he says is that-- Literally, I think the same day or day before or later, he was to see Donald Trump. The idea he goes to see Trump, he goes to see Sanders. Wow, that's great. He's talking to everybody, but I think what he wants to do, I think he's talking about, as Trump is, "Well, we're going to have Americans share in the wealth, and we're going to give them 5% of our profits," and so forth and so on. That's what he was talking about.

Meanwhile, OpenAI and the other AI entities are spending huge amounts of money in campaign contributions to their super PAC to make sure that Congress does not do what should be done. 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 impact on the mental health of our kids. 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. This is re-altering the brains of our kids. Reading skills are declining. Writing skills 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-- 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. I've had the experience. Deepfakes. You know what a deepfake is?

David Remnick: Of course.

Senator Bernie Sanders: They do it really well. Somebody could take me on your show right now and transform every word that I said, right? People say, "Why did Bernie Sanders say that? Why did 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?

David Remnick: 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?

Senator Bernie Sanders: Yes, it was. 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. Boy, did I get criticized for that. Imagine having American scientists talking to Chinese scientists.

Of course, that is going on all the time anyhow. 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. Literally, in the last couple of weeks, we have had AI models breaking away from human control. Not just the last few weeks, David. That is now.

David Remnick: Understood.

Senator Bernie Sanders: If we don't deal with this stuff, what's going to be the case next year, five years from now?

David Remnick: You've also proposed an American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act.

Senator Bernie Sanders: I did.

David Remnick: Talk to me about that. How would that play a role in the effort you're describing?

Senator Bernie Sanders: 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. It'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. 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. If a company comes forward and says, "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."

Public will have a voice, they'll be able to stop bad things, stop the undermining of our democracy, et cetera, et cetera. 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.

David Remnick: One of the alarming aspects, and there are many, about data centers, is that local and state officials have been signing non-disclosure 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 does the existence of these NDAs signal to you?

Senator Bernie Sanders: David, we're living in a moment where the law is not all that relevant anymore. We have a president who doesn't believe in the Constitution or the rule of law. I'm afraid his views have spread down to other Republicans. 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, 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 the time, and suddenly you got some multi-zillion-dollar company with 18 lawyers [unintelligible 00:13:05], and it's 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 money for property tax relief with schools or whatever you want. Just sign right here."

These are ordinary people taking on some of the largest corporations in the world. Not quite a fair fight. 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. [crosstalk]

David Remnick: 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 the left or anywhere else. How much has data centers picked up steam as-

Senator Bernie Sanders: That's interesting.

David Remnick: -a galvanizing issue?

Senator Bernie Sanders: Yes, you're absolutely right. There are a million issues that are out there. Every day, my office is dealing with 10 different issues. I think what AI and these data centers have done has given people who often feel powerless, 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? You know what? Some company wants to come in and destroy your local environment. You know what? We can fight back. Boy, have you seen, I'm sure you've seen some of these videos of local people taking on their poor little city councils. My God, mayors get thrown out of office, all that stuff.

I think people feel some sense of empowerment that they can actually stop something. 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. 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? What 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 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."

David Remnick: I'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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David Remnick: This 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. He saw the rise of the Internet from the vantage point of Capitol Hill. 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? I don't mean horse-and-buggy movement, but the rise of the automobile, the rise of electricity, the rise of the Internet? 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. 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 eyebrow-lifted condescension. Then they just went to town and did whatever the hell they wanted. It resulted in one of the great transformations of human consciousness and behavior in the history of civilization. It wasn't at all tempered by the efforts of our elected legislators.

Senator Bernie Sanders: You're discussing a very significant reality. The way I see it is that you have this extraordinarily transformational technology. 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. It's going to impact us in every aspect of our life, from 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. Then you pose a real concern. This is pretty complicated stuff. I can absolutely guarantee you that most members of the United States Senate are not steeped in the knowledge that, in fact, we should have, and I include myself in that, which is very- it's complicated stuff. 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 make certain that these technologies work for ordinary people, not just enrich the very rich. That seems to me the goal that we've got to achieve.

David Remnick: I gather you recently met with Erin Brockovich to talk about-

Senator Bernie Sanders: I did.

David Remnick: - data centers. What was that conversation like? Probably different than what-

Senator Bernie Sanders: I like her a lot.

David Remnick: -[crosstalk] with Sam Altman.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Yes, very different. She's an heroic figure. I think she expressed to me her real surprise. I think she got into this fairly recently that people started calling her from all over the country. They were conservatives, they were progressives. They said, "We need help in organizing, in stopping these data centers which are going to have such a destructive impact on our communities." I like Erin a whole lot.

David Remnick: 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, the presidency as well?

Senator Bernie Sanders: 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." 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. This is not a quote, unquote-- It is also clear that younger people understand the impact of this technology better than older people. That's true too. At the end of the day, it's not generational, it's ideological. It's which side you are on.

You have plenty of young people here who are saying, "Yes, let's give the big tech companies everything they want. We got to take on China. Let's go to war with Iran. Let's give tax breaks to the billionaires. I'm young, I'm the new generation." You got a lot of us old fogies saying, "Maybe that's not a great idea." I think we don't want to get caught up-- We do want young people in the process. Absolutely. I run around the country trying to do that.

We need people who are prepared to stand up for the working class of this country, to protect our environment, to protect our Constitution, to end bigotry, et cetera, et cetera. To me, I don't look at it as generational, I look at it as ideological. Which side are you on? Are you on the side of the working class of this country? As you may know, we just had some elections in Michigan the other day, which I think indicate that maybe the American people are in agreement.

David Remnick: We certainly did. We had on Abdul El-Sayed a couple of weeks ago, and he was heading toward what seemed like a 10 or 15-point victory, and he won by one point. He underperformed with working-class voters and voters of color despite a very populist message. How do you interpret that?

Senator Bernie Sanders: Let me tell you something. I would look at it again, David, in a slightly different way. I happen to think that his victory was the most extraordinary and impressive political victory in the modern history of the United States of America.

Abdul El-Sayed: Don't get it twisted. I love America. I know exactly what America did for me. I saw it with a front-row seat to what my life should have been, but for America. I love America enough to understand that America ought to be America for all of her children. I didn't have to go 15 hours.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Now, you tell me, you studied these things, right? All right. I want your opinion. Think back. You tell me of a candidate, a major candidate in a big race, primary, Senate primary, who took on the entire leadership of his own state, state of Michigan, Democratic leadership. Took on the Democratic leadership nationally here in Washington. Took on $70 million of super PAC and special interest funding. Took on various levels of bigotry because he happens to be a Muslim, and he won the election. I have never seen a candidate take on all of that opposition and win an election.

To me, it was an extraordinarily impressive victory. Now, I got to tell you something about polling in Michigan. When I ran for President in 2016, literally the day before the election, we were told all about, "Bernie, you're 20, 30 points down. You can't win." You know what? We got out of Michigan, we went someplace else because we thought we could lose. Then we won. We had to hold a press conference someplace else to announce our victory in Michigan. I don't know what goes on with polling in Michigan, but please do not underestimate--

David Remnick: I'm not underestimating, but I'm asking a very specific question about where he performed best and where he underperformed.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Yes. That's fair. I think what you're going to see is-- He was up against a popular governor. The governor came out against him. She has a lot of--

David Remnick: He's similar to New York City. Mamdani did great, but Black voters actually, did he underperform with them?

Senator Bernie Sanders: We will see what happens in the general election. I suspect that you're going to see a very strong coming together. Haley Stevens, by the way, was very gracious in her concession speech.

David Remnick: She was.

Senator Bernie Sanders: She understands, as I do, that now is the time that we come together to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of the United States. I think, without any doubt, the Black community will be there. The Latino community will be there. The working class community will be there. To the degree that I can be of help to Abdul, I certainly intend to do that.

David Remnick: Senator Sanders, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Thank you.

David Remnick: Senator Bernie Sanders. You can read a terrific piece about his early life and political evolution by staff writer Jill Lepore at newyorker.com, and of course, you can subscribe to The New Yorker there as well. NewYorker.com.

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