Artificial Intelligence

“We find it in places where there is already organized opposition to data centers, [and] where there is not,” says Matthew Levendusky of Annenberg School for Communication, School of Arts & Sciences, and Annenberg Public Policy Center.

“We asked these folks earlier in the year about their attitudes toward AI and data centers, and while their attitudes about AI generally didn’t really change very much, their attitudes about data centers did quite a bit,” says Matthew Levendusky of the Annenberg School for Communication, School of Arts & Sciences, and Annenberg Public Policy Center.

“People can use AI at work and think it saves them time but still think it’s a net negative for society,” says Matthew Levendusky of the Annenberg School for Communication, School of Arts & Sciences, and Annenberg Public Policy Center. “These technologies have all emerged so quickly that none of us have fully unpacked their true costs and benefits.”

"What stands out is the contrast," says Shawn Patterson Jr. of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Americans’ expectations for how AI will affect the country, and their views toward regulation, are essentially unchanged since March. Over the same period, however, opposition to a data center in their area rose 12 points. That's a dramatic move over a relatively short period of time."

“The demand for memory chips and the extraordinary prices we’re seeing here — the profit margins that these companies are getting for these memory chips — are unprecedented,” says Benjamin Lee of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “I haven’t seen this for 20–30 years since I’ve started working in this space.”

“Time can be an excellent diagnostic test,” writes Jeffrey Millstein of the Perelman School of Medicine in a guest essay, explaining that extensive diagnostic testing and scans can actually cloud a clinical picture more than help, despite advice that AI-powered chatbots tend to give.