Kai Ryssdal

Maybe get on a plane at like 8 o'clock this morning.

Fair enough.

We started our series the other day trying to figure out whether AI is getting too big to fail because there is massive spending happening, massive borrowing, too, to finance the data center boom.

I went to one in L.A.

Megan talked to people about their not so good feelings about our AI future and the tradeoffs that come with it.

But the thing is, the AI future is already happening in Silicon Valley.

There's a lot going on here.

There's data centers.

There's energy.

I want to back up for a minute.

What does it feel like here, AI-wise?

I mean, all the rest of us here about AI is, oh, my God, data centers and power and water and all those things, chat GPT and blah, blah, blah.

What does it feel like here in Silicon Valley?

We passed a couple of those billboards literally just outside the airport for both biggies like Google Gemini and for smaller companies neither Megan nor I had ever heard of.

Sorry, so let's back up.

You grew up here, which I did not know.

I probably should have, but I didn't.

So you were here, not that you're necessarily old enough to remember this, you were here in the dot-com box.

So is it that yet for AI here?

Because during the dot-com bust, it was obviously bad here.