Scott Wiener, who won Nancy Pelosi's open seat, says AI needs to slow down, while data centers face growing pushback over how much electricity they use.
Scott Wiener, the California state senator who won Nancy Pelosi's open San Francisco seat in Congress, says AI is moving too fast. "We need to slow this down," he told MIT Technology Review. "Because it's moving very quickly, and we could sleepwalk into a disaster."
As a state senator, Wiener wrote legislation aimed at curbing the risks of advanced AI. He won a tight race for the congressional seat, so he could now help shape federal AI policy. The interview took place only hours after he was declared the winner. He used the phrase "recursive self-improvement," which refers to AI systems improving their own abilities, about six times in 20 minutes. He called himself only "cautiously optimistic" that Congress can rein in AI.
The same newsletter looked at the backlash against data centers, the large buildings that run AI and online services. In Ashburn, Virginia, part of Data Center Alley and the world's largest data center hub, the reporter found that the real fault line may be electricity. Big Tech has framed the uproar as a culture war over progress. Drawing power from the grid or generating it onsite each provokes different kinds of blowback.
The takeaway is that the industry can improve its image but cannot escape the effects of its huge appetite for power.
The material does not spell out which AI rules Wiener will push in Congress or when. It also gives no figures on how much power any data center uses or what it could mean for household bills. Those details will decide how directly these fights reach homes and workplaces.
Watch two things: what Congress does on AI rules, and how local fights over data center electricity play out near you.
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