Data Centres Canceled: $286bn blocked by local opposition — Paris Marx

[00:00:00] Paris Marks: the narrative that we have is that generative AI is transformative, that generative AI is going to replace all this work. But then when we actually like, you know, dig under the hood, what we see so much is that, you know, companies are reporting that they're not seeing the return on investment that they expected from generative AI. When you have so many investment dollars already bound up in this vision, I think investors are also reticent to question it, because then it means that their investments are going to be worth a lot less than they were hoping that they would be. People don't really want this stuff, right? There has been a turn against the major tech CEOs and the major tech companies as well, right? Whether that is a frustration with how their products work, you know, how they have evolved over time and how they're not necessarily serving people in the way that they did in the past, you know, seeing the way that their products have been used for surveillance, for policing, for immigration enforcement, you know, in wars in different parts of the world, you know, this has really turned people against the tech industry in a very significant way. But I think that we have more power than we often think that we do in pushing back against it. And I think that's what these data center fights actually show, right? That people can have power to shut these things down and to disrupt the kind of narrative of inevitability that the tech industry relies on. [00:01:16] Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Isaac. And on the tech report with me today is the host of the Tech Quote Savers podcast and author of Hyperscalers, a new book which takes a look at data centers and AI. Paris Marks, thanks for coming on. Absolutely. Great to join you again. According to Morgan Stanley, nearly $300 billion of data center projects have been delayed or canceled since the start of 2025, as opposition to the construction of these facilities has grown quite sharply across America. And now tech companies are using eminent domain in order to seize land to build those data center sort of infrastructure like power lines and those sorts of things. What do you think this is going to do to a situation that is already kind of becoming a people versus big tech and government [00:01:59] Paris Marks: issue? Yeah, it's absolutely going to inflame things, right? And, you know, to be clear, what we're largely seeing here is we know that these massive data centers require a lot of electricity in order to make them run, right? And that means that these power companies across the United States have to build a lot of infrastructure and a lot of generation capacity in order to serve those data centers. And so, you know, the talk is that increasingly they are looking to use eminent domain. So these power companies are looking to seize the land that is needed in order to build out the infrastructures that are needed to power the data centers, right? And to be honest, we have already been seeing fights around this in different states around the US. Obviously, we hear most about, you know, the fights against the data centers themselves, you know, these big boxes filled with computers that, you know, have these energy and water demands and what have you. But we have also been seeing people fighting against the attempts to build more power infrastructure in various states and especially the states where, you know, the most of these data centers are being located because this really means, you know, these high voltage transmission lines being pushed through their properties, people, you know, which is not only kind of an eyesore, but but, you know, can also make sounds and things like that, that, you know, are not great to live next to, right. And so, you know, this just adds to the broader, I think, frustrations with what the tech industry is trying to do in building out all these data centers to power generative AI and, you know, various other products that they're selling. And, you know, it's just going to make that public anger even greater at a time when, you know, a lot of people, the majority of Americans are against, you know, this project that the tech industry is trying to bring into being. [00:03:34] Speaker 2: So tech executives are facing a lot of anger and in some unacceptable cases, they're facing death threats. And obviously that's genuinely terrifying and like they're understandably scared of the AI backlash. But if you sort of add on top the land being seized without owner's consent into this whole sort of debate that's going on around AI and, well, the companies, why do you think that some of them are shocked by this backlash? [00:04:05] Paris Marks: Uh, because I think they live in their own world and their own bubble where what they're doing is like perfectly acceptable and everybody else just needs to like get on board and accept what they want to do. Right. You know, this kind of like inevitability narrative that we hear about so often where, you know, generative AI is here, generative AI is going to be everywhere. We just all have to accept it. And why would anybody push back against that? Because this is just the future, right? You know, this is kind of the world that they live in, that they inhabit and that they want the rest of us to buy into as well. And it's very clear that a lot of people are not doing that. Right. And one of the things that really stood out to me when I was writing my book was how this is not like a new thing, right? You know, it feels like opposition to data centers is like this brand new development that we have just kind of discovered, right? This notion that these infrastructures can be very political and that people can be mad about them. But you go back to the Vietnam War and people were protesting computer centers and bombing computer centers. You know, these would be, you know, centers that have big mainframe computers at the time, often within kind of university campuses and whatnot, but they were helping to determine where bombs would drop in Vietnam. And people were very much against that war. And they were very much against these infrastructures being used in that way, too. And so, you know, at various times in history, the computer and, you know, the kind of facilities that hold a lot of computers have become very political objects, very political sites that people have sought to, you know, push back against. And I think that we're entering into a moment now where, you know, they are taking on this role again, in part because people don't like what they're doing to their communities and they don't like, you know, what the, you know, the data centers themselves are enabling when we think about the technologies and what those technologies are being used for. But it's also hard not to be opposed to it when you see these billionaires and the way they act in the way that they feel that they are above any accountability. And people really want to, you know, make them feel some accountability for the actions [00:05:53] Speaker 2: that they've taken over the past couple decades. Just yesterday, I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal that reported that billions of dollars were being redirected from colleges towards AI. And I was wondering if you think there's sort of this, the risk of this divide that you're talking about becomes dehumanizing, or maybe would you say it already kind of has become dehumanizing, given how much the needs of average workers, even education, are being de-prioritized or actively [00:06:24] Paris Marks: re-routed towards AI. Yeah, I think we certainly see that in many ways, right? And, you know, there's a lot of talk about like AI taking jobs and that sort of a narrative, you know, you will be very familiar with it, your listeners will be very familiar with it. But in so many cases, what we see is not so much the AI, like these AI tools replacing what regular workers are doing, but rather, you know, companies looking at the opportunity to use AI as an excuse to get rid of, you know, vast swaths of workers that they wanted to get rid of anyway, right, you know, in order to cut costs and things like that. And so, you know, you can already see how these technologies are being used against people. That's not even to talk about how they're being used in immigration enforcement, for example, in the United States, how they're being used in wars, whether that's in Gaza or in Iran, or I'm sure in Ukraine as well. You know, these are technologies that have a lot of negative impacts. And then when we're looking at the impacts on colleges and universities, you know, that can seem much smaller. But, you know, we have seen, I would argue this kind of long term attack on universities in the United States and in some other countries as well for quite some time, where there has been a real push to increase tuition fees to make them more focused on job training rather than critical thinking and, you know, kind of like, developing you as a person. And, you know, now to see this further attempt to siphon money away from colleges and universities, and put it into AI of all things, you know, a technology that, you know, reports suggest that when you become dependent on these chatbots, you know, it can affect your cognitive skills, your critical thinking skills, you know, these sorts of things, you know, it's really heading in a wrong direction. And it's, it's a bit ironic in a way as well, because the United States in this moment is like, so concerned about the threat of China, right, and China becoming this major, like technological competitor, you know, how they're developing AI that, you know, seems to be increasingly matching, if not in some ways, exceeding what the US AI companies can do, because certainly the Chinese models are often cheaper to run than the ones made in the United States. But, you know, obviously, China is competing on so many other technological fronts as well. And a big part of that is kind of, you know, training a workforce training, you know, scientists, engineers, all those sorts of people who can do that work. And that requires, you know, a well funded education system, college and university system. And the more that the United States kind of attacks its college and university system, and, you know, the types of people that it can produce to do this sorts of work, you know, it's it might not, you might not see it in the short term, but in the medium to long term, that's going to have an effect on its kind of innovative capacity and its ability to really be able to keep up and remain this kind of technologically dominant force in the [00:08:58] Speaker 2: world. A big part of where this, again, maybe using the word divide is a bit unfair, but we use it as a shorthand, a big part of where that comes from, I see is sort of a handful of people and companies throwing around this massive amount of money, while everyone else is not only struggling financially, but many are seeing utility bills rise and those local to constructions are facing shortages. And I think in one case, I even saw rationing as well. Do you think that the data center build out could be done in a way that actually protects the public, and is done in a way that helps the local communities? And if so, what do you think is stopping that from being done? [00:09:41] Paris Marks: Yeah, I don't know if I would go that far. But I think I would say that it doesn't need to be as negatively impactful as it is at the moment, right. And because I do think that we need to have a realization that we are going to need some amount of data center capacity, right. And I think part of the question is whether this amount that the tech companies want to build out is actually, you know, what is socially beneficial for people, they're certainly building out what they think is necessary for, you know, their kind of corporate ambitions, you know, to increase their power to to make people reliant on a product that, you know, I think the benefits of which, you know, generative AI, I'm speaking of, you know, is really kind of not determined yet, right? You know, whether companies are really going to see a return on investment from using this, whether the public is really going to benefit from it, I think that's still unclear at the moment, and the companies are certainly trying to convince us that it is. But of course, you know, I'm sure people have seen the stories in recent weeks of companies pulling back on their AI spending, because they're not seeing that return on investment. And so, you know, when we go back to, you know, what would a data center build out look like that maybe wouldn't be as damaging, I, you know, I don't know if I would go as far as to say it would be necessarily beneficial. But, you know, you probably wouldn't want data centers that are as large as these hyperscale data centers that these companies are building out, we would probably want to actually consider like, what we need all this computation for, and whether you know, the kind of tools that is going into powering are worth the cost of building out the computation to power them. And I don't think that's really a conversation that we're having at the moment. And then to think about where to actually locate these things, so that they wouldn't have, you know, these significant negative impacts, right, so that communities wouldn't be facing higher power bills, so that communities wouldn't be worried about threats to their water supplies, so that different neighborhoods wouldn't be dealing with noise pollution or light pollution that comes from having one of these data centers located so close nearby. And so I do think that there are ways to do that planning. But I think when the scale of the construction is just so vast, as it is at the moment, I think it's almost impossible to do that. [00:11:37] Speaker 2: I mean, putting putting myself in a developer's shoes, or maybe not a developer's, but an AI company shoes for a moment, they've, they've stacked up this house of cards of, we've got to build or otherwise, it all falls apart. Do you think that is maybe partly why they are trying to push through at such breakneck speeds and doing this eminent domain stuff? Because if they do stop, then they slow down and maybe take a more considered approach, a more appropriate approach that helps sort of address some of the anxieties we've been talking about, that actually that would just collapse things because, again, to slow down would trigger sort of the anxieties of investors who don't want to be left holding the bag of a bunch of, I mean, people say laser tag centers, but just useless infrastructure, [00:12:25] Paris Marks: basically. Yeah, the ones they're building now are almost too big to be used as laser tag centers, right? Like you would need to fit a lot of other things in there along with it, or it would be a really big kind of, you know, center to be, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you would need, you would need a lot of players in that space to make it worthwhile. But you know, I definitely think there's something to that, right? You know, the companies at the moment definitely feel that they need to keep increasing capacity, increasing scale, building more and more, you know, we know that how capitalism works, right? You know, growth is the name of the game at the end of the day. And so if the line doesn't go up, if the spending doesn't keep going up, then it could look like, you know, there, there is, you know, kind of a limit on how large this market is, you know, how many people want to buy into it. And so, you know, that definitely threatens the narrative that this is that generative AI in particular is this kind of technology that is transformative that everyone is going to have to adopt that has all these positive social benefits that come with it. You know, and that justifies this massive cost right now, because they're going to make it back in the future when everybody is using it, and it's delivering all these productivity and efficiency gains and all these sorts of things, right? So I definitely think it's linked to that. But I also wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't dismiss how the companies are just very much, you know, kind of, you know, part of their motivation is just to like build out as much of this infrastructure as possible, because on the one hand, controlling all this computation gives them a lot of power, especially when we're thinking about the Amazon's, Microsoft's and Google's of the world, if they control the computation, if we are all using their computation, that gives them a lot of leverage over, you know, you know, the public in general, but I would say also the other companies that are relying on, you know, their computation, their clouds, right? And then the other piece of this is, I think, ideological to a certain degree as well, right? Like, if you think about a company like OpenAI, they're not on the public markets yet. Certainly, they do have, you know, investors and people that they need to respond to. But they're not not a publicly traded company in the way that Amazon, Microsoft and Google would be. But even then, if you look at someone like Sam Altman, he very clearly believes that the future of technology, that the future of humanity is one where the amount of computation that we collectively use is much greater than it is today. Because he believes that eventually, we need to create, you know, the AI that can think for itself, and that, you know, we eventually merge our brains with it and all this kind of like science fictional stuff, right? But I, you know, and this can seem like really out there, like, you know, this certainly isn't motivating their decisions and that kind of thing. But I would argue that that's the whole reason why we have generative AI in the first place, right? This notion that we need these models that can do absolutely everything that can be applicable to any task, rather than building smaller specific models that are, you know, more focused around certain tasks, certain types of knowledge or information that would be, you know, much less computationally intensive. But that's not the direction that we've gone because, you know, the goals of the tech companies are not aligned with that approach. So what does it tell you then that they are choosing [00:15:27] Speaker 2: to seize land through eminent domain rather than take this more considered approach? We've spoken about what the motives might be behind that. But there is an argument to be made that the backlash that it is creating is going to be one of the biggest battles that big tech has to fight. And maybe it would be make a lot more sense to bring people along with you rather than risk or actually disenfranchise local communities and 70% of Americans who say they don't want a data center built near them. [00:16:00] Paris Marks: Yeah, you would think that would be the right way to do it, right? You know, to try to bring people along with you, but apparently not if you're one of the most powerful and wealthy industries on the entire planet. You know, I think one of the things that we're very clearly seeing with the tech industry, you know, with this build out is that, you know, the old mantra that came from Mark Zuckerberg, what, like two decades ago or something now move fast and break things is still very much how this industry operates. You know, they are going to operate at their speed. They think that things need to move fast. They think that, you know, if they have a new technology, they need to go all in on it and go as fast as they can to build out the infrastructures and the products and all those sorts of things. You know, I would say building out new things is not inherently a bad thing. The question is, you know, is that being done properly? Is that being done in a way that considers the impacts on the public, the impacts on the environment? And what we're seeing from the companies is that they clearly do not mind, right? You know, back in 2020, a lot of these major tech companies were talking about their climate commitments and their climate pledges. And just in recent weeks, we saw that the emissions of Microsoft were up, I think, 25% last year, and the emissions of Google were up 18%, right? You know, they have completely thrown aside this notion that, you know, they are kind of like green companies that care about climate change and are working, you know, very directly with the fossil fuel industry, you know, in order to get the natural gas to power their massive data centers. And so, you know, it's very clear that, you know, the thoughts of the public, the reaction of the public is very much something that these tech companies are not considering or not very worried about. And I think that that should give us pause when we think about, you know, how we allow these companies again and again to just steamroll over regulations to evade accountability, to do whatever they want in a way that, you know, time and again, you know, harms the public, if it's not immediate, then down the road, right? You know, there's a reason why everyone is talking about social media regulation now and countries are moving forward with it. And there's a lot of concern about the impact of chatbots and other tech products. You know, this industry has shown that they will pursue profit and power and growth at all costs. And, you know, they don't even really seem to need to offer the, you know, notion of public benefit in the anymore, unless something is newer as they did with chatbots, right? But once it's entrenched, they don't really care anymore. [00:18:16] Speaker 2: Mark. Over the weekend, there was 120 protests across, I think it was 37 states throughout America. And like I said earlier, 70% of Americans say that they don't want a data center bill anywhere near them. What about this has managed to unite such a broad and bipartisan support from American citizens, even among those that aren't necessarily living near projects that are planned to be built or being built or wherever, wherever with them? Yeah, it's really staggering, right, [00:18:47] Paris Marks: to see the degree to which that this is really a bipartisan issue, right? Part of you would think that, okay, this is Democrats, and they don't like Trump, and Trump is aligned with the tech industry and the AI and crypto industries. And so, you know, they're pushing back against him. But that's very much not what we see. You know, in the polling that I've seen, it's almost like neck and neck with opposition to data centers from Democrats and from Republicans. And, you know, there are many reasons for that. I think part of it is seeing how these infrastructures have moved into people's communities and the impacts on those communities and people wanting to stop them either expanding in their communities or wanting to stop them coming from their communities altogether, because they have heard from other people about what the effects are. And, you know, if you're thinking about Republican voters who would be more rural, you know, maybe, you know, in more farming places, things like that, they have their, you know, their own concerns about those infrastructures being located near them. Speaker 1: Whereas Democrats do as well in the suburbs and what have you, right? And obviously, that, you know, is that there's a mix of people everywhere. There are Republicans in cities, and there are Democrats in rural areas and all that kind of stuff. But just to, you know, kind of, kind of, you know, give a general idea. And so, there's the real impact that is bringing people together around this, you know, they're seeing how their local governments are, you know, really giving up a lot to these tech companies, whether that is giving them land, whether that is giving them massive tax breaks, you know, whatever it is to try to bring them in, and that's making them very frustrated. And we've already seen in elections on the state level and the local level in the United States, how data centers have actually made a difference to the outcome of elections, you know, voters actually kicking people out because they were too friendly to the data center industry, and trying to bring in these projects. But then I think the other piece of this, you know, more widely is that there has been a turn against the major tech CEOs and the major tech companies as well, right? Whether that is a frustration with how their products work, you know, how they have evolved over time, and how they're not necessarily serving people in the way that they did in the past. But also, especially on, you know, the more kind of left side of the political spectrum, seeing the way that the tech industry has aligned behind the Trump administration, you know, seeing the way that their products have been used for surveillance, for policing, for immigration enforcement, you know, in wars in different parts of the world, you know, this has really turned people against the tech industry in a very significant way. And so, you know, I was talking to a data center activist recently, and he was telling me that, you know, he talks to democratic opponents of data centers, and they have kind of one set of grievances and problems. And some of those problems might overlap with, you know, the issues that Republicans have, but Republicans often come to it with their own set of issues and complaints, right, that might not completely align with what the democratic opponents would have, but, you know, are perfectly legitimate in their own right, you know, and it's not about saying, okay, these people don't agree 100% on everything. But, you know, there are things that they agree on, and they definitely don't want these data centers in their communities. And so in a way that is almost surprising to see in the United States that looks so divided and so kind of tribal, politically at the moment, you know, data centers have become an issue where people of different political stripes are coming together, are seeing common cause and are working together. And, you know, I would say that there's something kind of hopeful in that. [00:22:01] Speaker 2: How exactly has local opposition stopped or delayed about $286 billion of data center projects? [00:22:08] Paris Marks: Yeah, we've definitely seen a lot of success in these movements, right? And, you know, if you if you look back like a year or two ago, you will probably say, Oh, you know, these are just people in their communities, you know, trying to stop these massive tech companies, it's never going to get anywhere. But now, you know, a couple years down the line, we see that this has made a really big difference. This has stopped a lot of projects, because, you know, once enough people in a community, in a certain jurisdiction, get together, politicians do have to listen, right, especially if, you know, we're in a democracy, and they care about keeping their jobs at the end of the day. Then it means that if they, you know, don't listen to their constituents who are very much against this infrastructure, this data center, then they're going to be out of a job come the next election. And like I said, we have actually seen that in various communities and states and on different boards in different parts of the United States. And so, you know, we have we saw it at the local level, it's now moving up to the state level, you know, we just saw New York State pass the first statewide moratorium on data centers in the United States that will last for up to a year as they put in a new kind of environmental and regulatory framework to handle data centers. And I would say that this is not the end of it, right? You know, we're heading into the midterm election season in the United States in November, I think you're definitely already seeing these discussions happening in other states. And I would really not be surprised if you start seeing it kind of break out at the national level in these in these elections, as we get closer to November, because this is an issue that's motivating a lot of people, you know, as you as you mentioned, you know, a majority of people are opposed to building these data centers in their communities. And this is not something that's going away. [00:23:46] Speaker 2: Like you said, a number of places have put in moratorial bans in New York being, New York state being the most recent. How much of a threat is is that sort of wave of of block blocks, bands, delays, moratorium, those things? How much of a threat is that to the AI bubble as these sort of traditional traditionally asset like companies move increasingly dependent on heavy industry with infrastructure that rapidly depreciates? [00:24:13] Paris Marks: Yeah, I think it can definitely be a threat. You know, it remains to be seen the full impact that that is going to have. And of course, there are other issues in the data center space, you know, are they over building capacity? What is that going to mean? You know, we're seeing stories recently about Oracle, for example, running into some troubles because of the way that, you know, they have been building out a lot of data centers, but the kind of way that they have been financially structuring those projects, you know, has kind of left it on the on the line for a lot of liabilities. And it's not clear that they can pay all those liabilities, right? And so I think that the opposition is one piece of it, because the companies are trying to build out a lot. And certainly they claim that they need all this capacity in order to serve, you know, their their customers, their clients, basically, who are looking for generative AI and other computationally intensive tools to run their businesses, or at least, you know, those tools are being pushed on them by the tech companies. And so it's definitely a threat. But I would say that if enough data center projects are stopped, it also kind of, you know, questions the whole narrative around this whole push and around this whole moment, right? And hopefully, and you know, we certainly see some investors and some analysts already talking about this, but, you know, really causes people to question whether it makes sense to be building this many data centers in the first place, whether it makes sense to be, you know, shouldering such a huge cost for a technology like generative AI, where it's not clear that, you know, the benefits are really there, you know, obviously, the return on investment that we would expect. And so I think that there's still a lot of, you know, big questions up in the air, when it comes to this data center build out and all the money being spent on generative AI. And the more that there's pushback against that, the more that there's opposition to, you know, what the tech companies want to do there, the more that there are voices questioning, you know, their vision of the future, I think the more that that puts their, you know, their, their kind of bubble or, you know, their push since 2022, to make generative, generative AI, the next thing, you know, calls it into question, right? [00:26:15] Speaker 2: I'm just curious, given the more general approach to apprehensive approach towards AI and stocks and investments and the declining public opinion, all these sorts of things, that it's heading in a downwards trajectory, rather than the sort of enthusiasm we were seeing, when all of this stuff was sort of coming into headlines. And I was just wondering, I mean, I get making predictions is always a messy business, but where, how far you think we are from seeing a proper, maybe not AI bubble pop, that kind of thing, but from a repricing, like a re addressing of the fact that we maybe are building too much, people don't want as much, want this as much as the AI companies are building for at the very [00:27:00] Paris Marks: least. I think it's certainly hard to predict, right? You know, things can go anywhere. And if we know anything from the way that the stock markets work, and particularly when it comes to the tech industry, that they can be very irrational, I would say, you know, if you look at, for example, the way that, say, Tesla has been valued for years, in a way that is not completely related, or not at all related to its actual financials, right, to kind of its underlying business, but, you know, it was a lot more around hype. But then, you know, as we talk about that, we can also look at the fact that, you know, Tesla has been down recently, that SpaceX has had a big correction since it has gone public, you know, as people have really looked behind, you know, the financials in the report to actually see what kind of business is there. And, you know, the business is not that great, especially when so much of it has been based around AI, because SpaceX bought x AI, Elon Musk's AI company. And that was a real kind of justification for the public offering that the company went through. And so yeah, I think, you know, it's hard to say that, you know, okay, we're, you know, a few months away from this big correction, because I would say, if you ask a number of people, they would have said, you know, several times by now that a correction is definitely coming. And then it didn't come right, because things can be very irrational when it comes to the tech industry and investment in the tech industry. And especially when you have so many investment dollars already bound up in this vision, I think investors are also reticent to question it, because then it means that their investments are going to be worth a lot less than they were hoping that they would be right. And so maybe when you see open AI and anthropic go public, you know, maybe that's a moment for for more questioning, because those early investors can kind of cash out and then say, Hey, I don't know what's going on with with this whole AI thing. But again, like, I wouldn't say for sure that that is definitely what we're going to see happen. But I think one thing that is clear, is that the public is going to get more frustrated with these tech companies with the things that they are, you know, trying to push on the public and their vision of the future in the world that we should be living in. Certainly, we see that with generative AI. But I would see we're also seeing a growing backlash to these smart glasses, you know, the meta Ray Bans and all that kind of stuff that that, you know, are going out into the world. And this notion that, you know, that that, you know, everyone should have a camera on their face and that you don't know when you're being filmed in public, you know, if someone's filming you on a phone, you can pretty clearly see them holding it up. If they're filming you from their glasses, it's a lot more difficult to to tell, right, especially if they have the little indicator light covered up or disabled in some way. And so yeah, I think that there are many different places where the public is questioning or turning against this, you know, future that the tech industry has been trying to build. And certainly they want to try to lock us into that future. But I think that we have more power than we often think that we do in pushing back against it. And I think that's what these data center fights actually show, right, that people can have power to shut these things down, and to disrupt the kind of narrative of inevitability that the tech industry relies on. [00:29:57] Speaker 2: So on the one hand, you have the AI boom that is being sold as a like inevitable leap forward of human progress, if not, if you ask some people human evolution, that's a whole nother thing. Um, on the other hand, it's being experienced by lots of people as sort of just a massive corporate resource grab. And I just want to ask what your insight is to where you see that contradiction taking things in the future? [00:30:23] Paris Marks: Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely difficult, right? Because I think that the narrative that we have is that generative AI is transformative, that generative AI is going to replace all this work, you know, as I was mentioning earlier, you know, that it's going to transform healthcare and education and all these different sectors of the economy. But then when we actually like, you know, dig under the hood, what we see so much is that, you know, companies are reporting that they're not seeing the return on investment that they expected from generative AI. And certainly, you know, in the past, you know, say last year or something, a lot of companies were just jumping on the bandwagon, because they figured that this was something that everyone had to do that you're going to be left behind if you didn't that there was probably even some upside for your share price, if you told investors that you were using generative AI, just because of how these things work. But really, what was often happening there is, they were just spending for the sake of spending. And because everyone else was doing it, and they were also kind of using those investments in AI to justify getting rid of workers, right. And so I think that there is a very clear divide in that, you know, there are ways that these companies can use these technologies in order to enhance their power over their workers, but also over the public. And I think that we also see the public, you know, obviously, people are using generative AI tools, I don't think that is at all surprising, you know, in many cases, you can access them for free. In some cases, people actually pay for them. You know, and there are reasons that people do that. Sometimes they're pushed to use the tools by their jobs by their employers, because that is the expectation for what they do now. In other cases, they might just be really stressed, you know, there's a lot of people in our societies that have a lot of demands on their time, a lot of things that they need to do. And if they're told that a tool will help them kind of do some of that a little bit quicker, then, you know, you can understand why they might be more likely to give that a shot or to become dependent on it, right. But I don't think that use necessarily means that they're supportive of it as well, right, or that they think it's necessarily a good thing. Just like, you know, I use social media platforms, that doesn't mean I think social media is the most amazing thing in the world, right? I still have a Facebook account, that doesn't mean I love Mark Zuckerberg or something. You know, and so I think that there are very real contradictions there. But I think, you know, what you're saying is, is, is absolutely right. I think that there is a divide. And I think that the public is increasingly offside with where the tech industry wants to take us. And I would say in many cases offside with where our governments want to take us to, you know, whether it's in the UK and the way that the UK government under under the Labour Party has been very pro AI in Canada, where I am, where our government is very pro AI. And we see polling that shows that the, that the public is not on board with this push, right, and that there are really serious concerns about the build out of data centres, and the rollout of these generative AI technologies. You know, and as we've been talking about in the United States, I think more countries are going to see that kind of conflict, if governments keep going in this direction, of, you know, listening to what industry wants, listening to what these major tech companies want, and not taking into account what that means for the public, [00:33:20] Speaker 2: and how they're feeling about it. I was going to just polish this off by asking if you think tech companies are sort of ignore, like willfully ignoring the fact that most of most people that are using AI don't really want it to be, at least being, at least wanted to carry on in the way that it is without the regulation, all this kind of stuff. But you kind of made the point there that governments, as, as sort of the supposed to be the embodiment of the people are ignoring [00:33:49] Paris Marks: the will of the people as well. Yeah, in many cases, I would say, right, I think that there's ignorance on on both sides, I think that governments are looking for investment and looking for GDP growth. And they're hoping to find that in both the adoption of AI technologies, but also kind of attracting investment from the tech industry, from these AI companies, from these data centre companies, in their jurisdictions to try to get tax revenue to try to get some jobs, you know, that sort of a thing, right? You know, it's a very kind of short termist consideration of what you need to do to like transform the economy or grow the economy or what have you. And that I would argue that that has motivated a lot of the responses of governments to the AI moment. But I also think that the tech companies are in many ways ignorant to how the public is feeling. And I think that they really feel that they are above accountability and that they can do what they want, right? And that they will never feel the pushback for what they are doing. And, you know, I think that they're increasingly starting to see that maybe that is not the case, right? You know, we see them, as you mentioned earlier, fearing for their safety when people are say, you know, going after the home of Sam Altman or trying to, you know, go after Elon Musk, for example, because people are getting so angry with these billionaires who wield so much power and seem to have very little concern for the effects of how they wield their power on regular people. But I think you also see it in like, you know, the, the business angle of this, you know, the, in many cases, their products are not making money. You know, we do see these reports from open AI and Microsoft that they're having a very hard time converting users to become paid users of, you know, chat GPT and copilot and what have you. People don't really want this stuff, right? And meanwhile, there's a growing movement of people that are not only fighting data centers, but looking to opt out of AI, however they can, and even reconsidering their use of other platforms and services because they're really frustrated with these companies and because they're, they're just fed up in general. I would say with the system of digital technology that has been pushed at us, that is so based on making us view a ton of ads, you know, extracting a ton of data from us, you know, and, and just the other kind of problems that have come with this system. And now, you know, even the platforms that we were once told were great are filled with a bunch of false information that is AI generated, and you don't know what is true anymore. And, you know, you have maybe friends or family members who, you know, are starting to act a little weird because of their engagements with chatbots and, and what they've, they've been doing there. And so there are a ton of like social effects that come with this too, that I think people are just tired of. [00:36:22] Speaker 2: Well, Paris Marks, thanks for taking the time. [00:36:24] Paris Marks: Absolutely. It was great to chat. [00:36:26] Speaker 2: If you enjoyed today's episode and you want to hear more of The Tech Report, please consider liking and subscribing. Also, you can get episodes of The Tech Report, wherever you get your podcasts.