Megan McCarty Carino

They've been distributing yard signs, going door-to-door, even sponsored a billboard at a busy intersection in town.

They worry about noise, pollution, traffic, declining property values, and strain on the power grid.

Electricity prices in the area have already gone up an average of 26 percent in the last year, and they doubt the benefits of AI will make up for it.

the ai is on there you can't even opt out of it it's like what do you do just stop using your phone no just go back to what a year ago when you just did a regular search how hard is that that's what we can do in early january after an hour and a half of public comment universally opposing the amazon data center the hobart city council voted to move forward with the plan

which includes a $47 million payment to the city and a promise to cover the additional energy infrastructure it would need.

Big tech has some pretty big trust issues to work through with Americans after the social media era.

And it sure doesn't seem like the industry is trying too hard to disabuse consumers of their fears.

Whether they're hyping products to investors or earnestly concerned, we've heard leaders speculate about AI obliterating jobs, substituting for relationships, or wiping out human civilization.

Spencer Kaplan is an anthropology PhD candidate at Yale who studies the culture of the AI industry, which he says is more philosophical than other corners of tech.

Many researchers are deep into intellectual movements that prize reasoning out loud about big existential questions, like how to save the species from rogue AI.

I mean, one could just say, well, why not just not work on the technology if you think it's going to destroy the world?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Why not?

I do think there is a sense of inevitability in the field about AI that if I don't work on it, then someone else will.

He says many who come off as doomers are also extremely excited about the tech.

It's a contradiction that feels natural in their world, even if it doesn't to the rest of us.

I'm rooting for natural intelligence.

That's what I'm rooting for.

That's Professor Enid Baxter-Rice in Monterey again.