Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

It's not like AI just happens out of thin air.

You need huge amounts of compute sucking up huge amounts of electricity, potentially using huge amounts of water to cool it.

And that has physical consequences in communities like ours.

So when it comes to the regulation of

I think we need it.

And the problem right now is a lot of the folks who understand it best are taking money from the very same corporations who want zero regulation at all.

And a lot of the folks who want to regulate are not as close to the technology.

I aim to try and solve that as somebody who understands the development of this technology and also has not taken money from the corporations that are trying to tell us that somehow they know better for our whole entire future.

And when it comes to data centers, I've been very clear.

We put out a terms of engagement.

This has been a live issue.

There were 15 data center projects proposed in Michigan in the last year alone, and there are many, many more slated for 2026.

And our terms of engagement are thus.

If you want to open a data center in Michigan, you better meet the following terms.

Number one, if you're promising jobs, you need to create all the jobs you said you were going to create, and they need to be good union local jobs.

Number two, there cannot be any increase in our electricity costs.

In fact,

You should be invested in reducing costs and some of the revenue that is passed on to utilities needs to be spent to improve our reliability.

Three, there should be closed loop systems, meaning you cannot connect to the water infrastructure and to our water resources and think that you could just pollute our water to cool your computing in your data centers.

Four, that there has to be a community benefits agreement that is negotiated and prepaid for