Siliconsciousness: Entering a New Chapter in the Debate on AI Policy

revolution, politics and policy.

Hello and welcome to a special edition of Silicon Consciousness and our AI energy and climate podcast, I'm David Rothkuff, I'm the host of Silicon Consciousness and we are joined today by the host of the AI energy and climate podcast, our friend David Sandalot, David as you know, is the inaugural fellow at the Center for Global Energy Policy, Senior Research Scholar and Co-Director and Energy and Environment Concentration at Columbia School of International

and Public Affairs as a former senior official in the Energy Department and in the state department and is an all around good guy who's been traveling everywhere in the world, it's good to see you here, David. David, it is great to be here on your great show. Well, we are also in your great show, but I'm going to ask the questions and you're going

“to get to sort of sit back and answer them there a lot because I think we're at one of”

those inflection points with regard to AI policy but particularly with regard to AI energy and climate policy and I can pull something straight out of the air because last night, I don't know if you saw this, but in Thailand, they passed a new law and the new law in Thailand was that they were going to come up with a completely separate set of rules for AI companies with what it comes to energy, completely separate sort of set of charges for

that electricity so they more fairly bore their share and so I'd just like to start there since that was news from this morning.

David, first let me start by thanking you because I think you originally suggested that

I host the AI energy climate podcast and in any event you've been a tremendous mentor

“and coach, which I greatly appreciate and in the short time that's what you're trying to say”

is I'm older than you. You are and maybe wise for as well, but that will see what that tells you. The jury is definitely out of it. In the short time since we launched the AI energy and climate podcast, we just had tremendous guests including Jensen Hwang, the Nvidia, Jennifer Grand Home Former US Energy Secretary

Ernie Moniz and other former US Energy Secretary, Lord Nicholas Stern who is one leading experts on climate change, economics globally and we've got great guests coming up so here's the pitch. If you're interested in these topics, I energy and climate please listen and send us your feedback and then on your questions so I have not seen the news entirely and but I did see

the news in New York which is pretty interesting and if your listeners are listeners may know New York now has a more Tory and my data center development for the next year, the governor of New York, governor of Hochel just put into effect an executive order that suspense and development

“of data centers for a full year and I think here's an observation about this David.”

The politics of this issue has shifted more quickly than any issue I can recall. So I did a study last year on legislative activity on data centers around the United States in state gap capitals and we published this results in December of last year, seven months ago and what we found seven months ago was that most activity related to data centers in 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 that shifted dramatically and now we're in a state where 71% 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 Hochel who is up for reelection 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 they're AI which you know four years ago in an election would have 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 political to

that I know you would never read such things but there's a story in political today about how

we want the states to come up with their own strong safety legislation because that's

their thing in their position. A lot of people there left open AI because they didn't think they were strong enough on safety issues whereas open AI 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.

“You know I think you were you were a bit prescient on this day but I recall you saying a year or two”

ago that the elections ahead are going to be the first elections where AI is you know a factor

and I think we're it's I think looking forward to the next couple year AI may well be the central factor in elections there's almost nothing that's defining our politics more and I think it's only gonna grow and one very interesting development of this space I mean addition to this moratorium in New York one very interesting development is this question of whether federal government should own shares in AI companies and there aren't what's what I find fascinating about this

issue is that to some extent Bernie Sanders Sam Altman and Donald Trump have said similar things on this topic it's it's quite fascinating so Bernie has a bill that he's proposed in which federal

government would own 50% of the major AI companies and have voting shares and Sam Altman

and open AI as well as anthropic actually have produced papers that have somewhat similar concepts they don't talk about a 50% share but they talk about the sovereign wealth fund that would be seated in part with funds with shares from their companies and then Donald Trump when asked about this last month on Air Force One said yeah you know it this could be a good idea and you know I don't think Donald Trump's random musings one day are not necessarily

predictive of what his policy will be the next day but but interestingly his administration has actually taken shares in a number of companies you know we now federal government now wants 10%

“of Intel and and the Trump administration is doing things here that you know I think if”

Joe Biden had done them Republican Congress would be screaming and saying no this is socialism but because Trump is doing it they're accepting and so I think I think this I'm the politics of this they're going to be very interesting in the years I had yeah I don't think it's socialism David I think it's communism I mean I think you know this is like I saw that the Speaker of House yesterday was advocating for a huge juke of money in the defense budget because we had to

defy communism here in the United States of America I would point out there you know there is no real communist threat the US but Donald Trump is leading a charge where he somehow thinks there is some benefit to the United States owning shares in companies steel companies other companies not just AI companies and I'm just wondering you know is I met is we did a still consciousness podcast that had just started airing yesterday on the potential for an AI bubble and I wonder if

if when you've got members of the Senate suggesting we should have an AI sovereign wealth fund that's as big a sell sign as you possibly could get in the sign that the AI bubble is about

“to births but what do you think I think this is a complicated question and I think you know the”

fact that Bernie is out with the Senator Sanders is out with the proposal going pushing this directions suggests that you know there's a lot of progressive interest in this space and and I think for I think for some good reason so we are going to see open AI and anthropic go public in the next year or so I think we markets expect and probably a trillion dollar valuations and that's that happens I think a question is should how do the how do the American people get some get value in

that and having some federal government ownership of these shares I think it's an idea worth exploring I think I think there's some real issues I think there's conflict of interest issues when the federal government own shares and companies that need to be handled carefully but I look I think these AM models have been trained on all of human knowledge I think you know really without permission of the people who provided them including provided the knowledge including a lot of

dismiss the idea I think it's an interesting one that we should be exploring you know I think I

was thinking of myself as being more lefty than you but I but I got to tell you that's not my instinct on this kind of thing I don't know that the federal government could conceivably add any value in this and I don't know that the federal government owning shares in some companies is really the level playing field for the development of AI that we are looking for and you know so I worry that there are some potentially negative side effects I know you're not this

“misguid I think you said it as a complicated issue but I think the core gets to something that you just”

sit which is how do the American people get you know they're benefit out of all of this and I think part of that is related to the fact that right now the American people when you say I AI to them they think Mark and Dreson Zuckerberg, Ellison, Bezos, Musk, Billionaires, oligarchs, close to Trump, get everything that they want, get the tax laws written for them, they're rake in it in the magnificent seven or driving the stock market, they're all getting rich and we're getting

data centers built in our backyard that don't create jobs that suck up electricity that use up water our jobs are at risk they're going to be big labor market dislocations what's in it for us and

“you know I think that's what you're getting at and I think no that's the issue and you know”

the question is what is the public policy formulation that ensures that companies do what companies

were intended to do since the first corporations were founded in the western world the thousand

years ago and that is served the state the reason you get a charter you give a charter to a company is because they're going to ostensibly bring some benefit to society and in this particular case people are worried that AI run rampant is going to kill their jobs make the rich richer and pull the rug out from under anybody else. This podcast is underwritten in part by the US embassy of the United Arab Emirates it's editorial content is completely independent and the views

expressed are exclusively those of participating experts it is presented live without editing for further information about the UAE's efforts in the areas of artificial intelligence and technology go to the website of the embassy at www.ue-emBC.org and search for UAE-US tech cooperation we thank them for their support we thank everybody who's supporting this podcast for their support and we look forward to it developing and growing over time because the issue is so

important.

“Exactly and look I I don't have definitive answers on this since I said I think it's complicated”

question but but I think having some share in the upside as these companies grow is maybe part of the answer you know look we can also do this with tax policies obviously we could do it by having these companies seed transition funds of some kind education programs there's lots of different approaches you know I think I look I did a little bit of research I did a little bit of research

while ago on power prices and affordability and the statistics here are pretty amazing so

more than one in five Americans have been behind on their utility bills in the past year and the and get this the cumulative debt of all Americans to utilities right now the overdue bills about $23 billion something in their neighbor the profits of the mag seven last year were $400 billion so with five or six percent of their profits the mag seven companies could wipe out the utility arirages of every American is overdue on their utility bills if I think that they

should be seriously considering taking steps like that you know and there's enormous suspicion right now in communities about these data centers raising power prices and and from the research I've done in some places in the country in fact you to data centers are raising power prices but in many places they're not in many places other factors are what's raising power prices but if you tell

their trust institutions if you tell them oh no the data centers aren't raising your prices they're not going to believe it what what would make it big difference is if these companies come in and

actually paid for people's bills with all this incredible money they're making if they actually

made people fly better in a tangible way they're not doing that right now and that's one of the reasons there's this backlash yeah excellent suggestion and and and and it's it's a concrete

“idea and and I think that you know implicit in it is a choice that some of the leaders in this”

industry name I appreciate and that is either they come up with this idea as a way of a humiliating people concerns about power costs and and about AI or somebody else is going to come up with this idea in a government they're going to make a part of tax policy or they're going to write it in someplace else and so this does become an opportunity for forward leaning you know AI companies to come in and say for a tiny fraction of what we get we can make we you know we can use

our role in this to improve the communities where it and and frankly you know to me this you know

this ties our first sort as part of the discussion the second which is I think that AI sector needs

to look at this less from a national policy point of view and more community by community because it is a local issue at this point and the question is how do you integrate AI into your community in terms of energy used as in terms of climate impact in terms of labor impacts and so for it in a way that it you know how does it benefit the community can benefit in terms of education it can benefit in terms of adding efficiency to governance it you know there are a lot of ways

that an AI company could ingratiate themselves to a community and they they still have quite learned that lesson and throughout the Kesley Good Program in this area that I want to you

know applaud them for the they're funding training for NGO workers to learn about their tools

“and then go back into their NGOs to to apply those tools I think that's in the spirit of”

the type of thing you're talking about David and we need we need to see more of that yeah you know also frankly political parties I mean you and I both been part of democratic administrations but I think both political parties need to figure out what their constructive AI policies are you know there's a you know there's a lot of talk that the Trump administration's policies towards AI are kind of less a fair let them do whatever they want but a laundry Nelson who has

been on our show a lot and is a former senior official in the US government now at Princeton points out no the Trump administrations policies are actively pro AI it's not less a fair they're actually doing things to help this industry I'm not sure what the democratic party policies are an AI I saw something on social media this morning and it tied into this New York moratorium and tied into some of these other issues and it said the Democrats have better get on the

anti-data center bandwagon facts and I was like well that's a completely a nuanced idea but that's where you get if if you're not having a healthy discussion you worry that the

“discussion will become simplistic yes and and I agree with with you I think this issue is going to”

split both political parties in the next couple of years I'm it's interesting to see the reaction to Governor Hockel's announcement on data centers the union's opposed that so did and the trades came out pretty strongly against this band and data centers and so it kind of typical historically typical democratic coalition is split on this issue of data centers and I think we're going to see that grow actually as we in the next election in particular in the 2020 cycle

and I think Republicans to it there's you know there's a very strong pro AI pro business faction within the Republican party that I think is is you correctly say has dominated Trump administration policy but there's a strong populist surge in the other direction and a lot of this opposition to data centers has been every bit as much for Republicans as Democrats so I think this this is going to split both parties in the years ahead yeah does it

I mean what what I think there's been this kind of interesting subtext in all of this which is in in your in your Bailey wig which is that Trump

problems with win-knows because he says birds I don't know it's kind of crazy on it

and he's anti-alternative energy and he's all sort of pro fossil fuels and so forth and yet I recall seeing stories come in at a Trumpy Texas where they're like well we're going to keep going with the windows in the solar because that's the cheap power that we need in order to deal with this increasing demand and so you know that part it's kind of it's kind of an interesting embedded consequence of growing demand as a result of AI which is to push people towards the less

expensive cleaner forms of power generation which happen to be solar and wind

“at which you know the administration opposes I think that's an interesting contradiction”

I mean it's interesting to see in Texas which is very market oriented they're in their policies

to solar and wind are growing enormously for the reasons that you state because solar and wind are very cheap right now you know particularly solar but but but wind too and yeah and these policies to cut off the growth of this cheap technology is only going in the wrong direction when it comes to protecting Americans against rising power prices so just it just doesn't make it's what there's the another you know I know in your professional life you'd like to

remain you know sort of nonpartisan but in my professional life I'm partisan so let me say the fun you know there is this kind of pattern with Trump where he tries to one thing and he gets the

“opposite result and he's tried to be very pro fossil fuel and you know his war in the Persian”

Gulf has pushed demand for solar and wind world wide more than anything else and you know giving a free rain today is going to push demand for solar and wind more than anything Donald Trump is a big green president I hope you embrace him as a big green president David there's one of them you're just don't want to deal with that okay fine fine fine you know I know what you're going to change this subject to and not you know that's fine I'm

happy to go there okay I was I was just going to share with with our listeners there's one of the topic I've been working on which which I have found fascinating and it is putting data center it's out of this world literally it is putting data centers in outer space and I'm in

“the middle of a big project on this we don't I'm working with a fantastic team looking at this”

topic and we we're going to put out a report this fall so I don't have definitive conclusions but

it is pretty amazing and they're you know just to kind of some headlines here there billions of

dollars of private capital right now being invested in putting data centers into outer space I don't have a judgment as to whether or not that's actually going to happen but but it Elon Musk is in the lead on this he's put the most money in but it's by no means just Elon Musk there are a number of other companies that are doing this there's actually one data center that is trained in AI model up in outer space company called StarCloud's venture funded company did this there's

Chinese projects in this area and significant interest from the Chinese government it's in Chinese companies so there's there's real exploration in this area and the obvious advantage of doing this of putting data center that space is you don't deal with I mean you don't have to do things that communities oppose we were talking about earlier you have 24/7 solar power up there you don't use water which is an issue so there's some advantages but but there's a lot of challenges and

complications as well so we're looking at those but it's it's a fascinating issue I'm sorry to interrupt but I really have to tell you about our sub-stack the DSR network of sub-stack is the absolute best way to follow deep state radio the DSR daily words matter need to know silicon consciousness AI energy in climate and the daily blast sign up to get notified every time a new episode drops and stay up to date on the latest news and expert analysis you can also support us

by becoming a paid member paid members get an ad-free listing experience select episodes two days early access to live streamed episodes and 50% off of David's need to know sub-stack please consider joining us at DSR network sub-stack.com that's DSR network sub-stack.com thank you and back to the show yeah well we talked a little bit on the podcast that we did on the AI bubble on SpaceX and that 90 percent of SpaceX sort of value proposition is AI related and a big chunk of that is related to this

need to be resolved you know you still have to sort of warm up the data centers enough for everything

to work in the cold of space and you've got to cool down things you've got there's a the whole set of technical challenges associated with them is it a is it a near term realistic goal or is this up there with SpaceX is you know all our money is going to come in 30 years on Mars there's a range of views on this I don't have a judgment but Google so Google has a big project in this area or a project and and they've projected that this would be feasible in the middle of the next decade

so so there you know seven or eight years out Musk is saying he's going to do this next year he just

“did this in he had a tweet exchange with Sam Altman over the weekend I think or he was talking”

about this it you know Elon has a long history of well let me say one whisper to Elon I totally disagree with his politics two what he's done with respect to launch cost into outer

space is pretty amazing me so largely as a result of what Elon Musk has done not just Elon but

largely Elon the cost of launching a power and a kilogram up into outer space right now is 80% less 90% less than it was 15 years ago in that area so he's done some pretty amazing things he he says he's going to get these up in the next couple of years in outer space he also has a track record of predicting things that don't happen on the time frame that he says going to happen so I don't know what time frame it's going to happen on but one of the reasons for our work is there's

enough attention going to this there's enough real money going into this that I think it requires study by by policy experts by by people just to look at the governance issues what will it

“what will we need to do to manage this what are the pros and cons and so that's what we're looking”

to the topic so stay tuned yeah well and I think it's an important topic to track and I think that it is indicative of the fact that this is a moving target and that when you're dealing with data centers you know it's you know there there are new technologies that are going to change data centers but aren't some of the technologies likely to change energy demand of data centers change cooling demands change water demands going forward absolutely and and thought this gives me a great

chance to plug our next episode of the AI energy and climate podcast David because I'm talking to a very interesting entrepreneur who has launched a program along with Nvidia to put little computing notes tiny computing nodes in residential neighborhoods around the country to provide homeowners with value it's kind of kind of the idea of like distributed distributed network that on its own has up to a data center and it's a it's a creative idea we're going to have a dialogue about

“what the various barriers and constraints are but I think when you see problems like we see”

arising right now with huge local opposition to massive data centers these are the type of creative ideas that emerge so there's a lot of interesting ideas out there before we go because we only have a couple of minutes but there's one other thing I'd like to ask you about because unlike a lot of people who talk about this stuff and who talk about places like China you you actually go to China you know you you know you visit I've there are a lot of people

including people who've been on several of our podcasts who are China experts who written China

boats who have either never been to China or haven't been in many years you're going there

you're teaching there you're seeing what's going on there and you know we've seen you know discussions about AI models change a lot because all of a sudden China comes along and says well we have a more efficient way of doing it and people are like oh my god that actually works and so maybe we don't need as much energy and so forth and I just would like you to reflect for a moment or two on what you're seeing there and the fact that a lot of people are saying

China is leading in many of the key areas of AI the United States you know can complain about it but it's not going to change that a couple thoughts David first and that this is tough as an American when you go to China but sometimes being in China has a little bit of a feel of looking into the future and sometimes when I'm over there I wish that every American you know could quickly visit and see and and by the way that lack of exchange between our two countries is a

real problem right now Americans are going to China Chinese are coming here it's a huge issue but let me just for example the robotics in China are just way ahead of where we are now there's much you see much more presence of robusts you just in stores and other places and in electric vehicles

and conventional vehicles have blue license plates so as you drive around the street it's very

“easy to see what are the plug-in electric vehicles in the streets of Beijing last month and roughly”

half of the cars I'd say have green license plates maybe more and these friend of mine was describing his vehicle his EV which as you approach the EV he simply says in Chinese a range

of open the door and the door opens and he sits in the car the car recognizes him and act

differently when it recognizes his face with respect to autonomous vehicle technology then it does if somebody else sits in the car so it's a little bit sobering with respect to with respect to AI more than half of the peer reviewed journal articles on AI issues last year were by Chinese authors

there's huge advances in in AI topics in in China and look in an ideal world we would be working

“together in some fashion experience area and you know and I think it's it's a challenge for our”

for the world right now this bitter competition between the US and China and we need to even as we compete we need to improve the communication between our two countries yeah and a lot of companies are actually communicating because they realize that a lot of the technology a lot of the brains a lot of the innovation is over there and a lot of you know it's going to require global cooperation one way or another well look it's been very good to talk to you

“and I think this has been a really interesting discussion and I hope that everybody who listens to”

silk consciousness says oh I really think I need to also listen to the AI energy and climate podcast and I hope that people listen to that podcast will listen to silk consciousness so you know we moved our base platform over to substact so anything that's in our feet now is going to go out and get pushed to everybody and and this is a way of saying these are valuable podcasts that pertain to your daily life going and join them and hopefully this will grow the

audience for all of them here on on substact on wherever you get your podcasts on YouTube you know whether you're getting bits and pieces of it on Instagram or TikTok but you're doing great over there with the podcast David and I hope everybody goes and joins it and hopefully you'll come back and continue this conversation but for now on behalf of silo consciousness and on behalf of the AI energy and climate podcast and David thank you very much bye bye

this was silo consciousness a production of the DSR network