Sanders pitches bill to block data centers as populists seize on AI fears

Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce legislation Wednesday to block the construction of new data centers until lawmakers enact regulations on artificial intelligence, laying down a marker on the populist left as Washington confronts deep public skepticism of the new technology.

By targeting data centers — the huge computer facilities powering AI — Sanders, a Vermont independent, said the bill seeks to slow the advancement of the technology, giving Congress time to debate the guardrails.

“There are people who are talking about this being much more transformational than the Industrial Revolution in terms of impacting more people in a much more rapid timeline,” Sanders said in an interview. “And I think it is amazing to me, given all of that, given the concerns that ordinary Americans have, that Congress has done virtually nothing to control AI and robotics.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, is planning to introduce a similar House bill in coming weeks, and while the legislation is all but certain to fail, it reflects how battle lines over AI are hardening in advance of this year’s midterm elections. Populist figures in both the Democratic and Republican parties are seeking to rein in the potent technology in response to constituents’ fears of mass job losses, spiking energy bills and pollution. But at the other end of the spectrum is the Trump administration, where influential White House advisers with ties to the tech industry are pushing for the country to move ahead without limits in hopes of unlocking an economic revolution and staying ahead of China.

The White House’s position is backed by a huge campaign war chest funded by the AI industry, but supporters of moratoriums on data centers see energy swinging their way. Dozens of cities and counties across the country are considering pauses on construction, as are about a dozen states, with efforts led by Democrats and Republicans alike.

When the environmental group Food & Water Watch first called for a nationwide moratorium in October, Mitch Jones, the group’s managing director of policy and litigation, said they were mostly “out of hand dismissed.” But within months, other groups had signed on and Sanders began touting his support for the idea. Jones said momentum is continuing to grow.

“Let’s be honest, one of the best pieces of evidence for this is the amount of money the industry is throwing into this year’s elections,” Jones said. “They are aware that the momentum is against them.”

Recent polling by the Pew Research Center found that Americans have a dim view of data centers’ effects on the environment, energy costs and quality of life for people who live nearby — although respondents had more positive feelings about their economic effects.

Sanders has been sounding the alarm about the potential for massive job displacement as smart computers and robots take on work once done by humans, posting a video of experts discussing how AI could lead to human extinction and another of him “interviewing” one AI tool about the technology’s privacy impacts. He traveled to California last month to confront technology executives.

“The vast majority of Americans, especially working-class people, are extremely apprehensive about what AI and robotics will mean to them,” Sanders said.

The Sanders bill seeks to link data centers, the physical and most visible manifestation of AI in many communities, with the technology itself. The Sanders-Ocasio Cortez legislation calls for a moratorium on construction until the federal government passes rules to ensure that AI technology is safe and that the wealth it stands to create is shared across society.

The Trump administration released a legislative framework last week that includes limited regulation of AI and bars states from passing their own rules. The president’s team has acknowledged public skepticism about data centers, and officials brought tech leaders to Washington this month to commit to paying for the electricity they use.

Cy McNeill, the senior director of federal affairs at the Data Center Coalition, said that the industry is committed to working with communities and that a moratorium “risks rationing access to digital services, impairs our global competitiveness, and will have substantial impacts on Americans’ daily lives.”

But Brad Carson, a former Democratic congressman who now runs the pro-AI safeguards organization Public First Action, said the White House’s strategy of betting so heavily on such limited regulations carries risks: “If they don’t get that, plan B is Bernie at the moment.”

The industry itself recognizes it has an image problem. And as they have hyped the power of their technology, leading executives have not always pitched it in the most flattering terms. Dario Amodei, the chief executive of AI lab Anthropic, recently said he envisaged a potential economic future characterized by high economic growth but also high unemployment as people across a range of industries struggle to adapt.

But as the elections approach, AI industry-funded political committees are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to elect the most favorable Congress they can. OpenAI president Greg Brockman and other wealthy executives have backed a political committee that is campaigning against supporters of strict AI regulation. In turn, rival Anthropic has backed Carson’s group to the tune of $20 million. (OpenAI has a content partnership with The Washington Post.)

A similar debate is playing out in state legislatures around the country, where unlikely alliances have formed as communities confront the possibility of huge data centers springing up both in poor urban communities and on remote rural plots. Analysts have identified about a dozen states where lawmakers are considering construction bans ranging from a few months to several years.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been among Republican leaders seeking to put a harness on AI, supporting privacy rules and limits on use of the technology to provide mental health care and insurance decisions, along with a package of measures to keep data centers in check.

“We want to make sure that Floridians are not going to end up road kill with this AI revolution,” DeSantis said in January.

But for all the debate, there’s little sign that the fiercest regulations are likely to move forward in state capitols. MultiState, a government relations firm, is tracking a few dozen data center bills that have made substantial progress this year. Morgan Scarboro, a vice president at the firm, said they’re generally modest pieces of legislation aimed at helping state governments gather more information about the fast-growing industry.

“There’s no clear partisan divide on this issue,” Scarboro said. “It’s probably one the very few issues in politics where you have extremely strange allies.”