AI Data Centers Lost at the Ballot Box - They're Still Coming

Jeremy: The bill is coming due for the tech revolution. In red states, voters turned ballot boxes into referendum battlegrounds over the AI data centers spiking their power bills. Meanwhile, Elon Musk tried to sell us a flying car that couldn't even stick the landing, and Anthropic's new agents are quietly building the next version of themselves. I think I've seen that movie. It's all coming up today on Brobots, the podcast that tries to help you be a better human by being smarter about the way you use your technology. All right, so Jason, data centers were a big issue on the ballot for voters in this last election. and there's a lot of celebration going on. I I know I'm happy with the results. I don't wanna, you know, rub it in for for the people that are still stinging from the crushing defeat last week. But data centers were on the ballot and in a big way. Voters as they left exit polls said, I believe 56% said that the the data centers that were eating up resources and driving up energy bills were a big part of the reason that people voted blue. In very, very red states.

Jason: Yeah. I there's nothing else that you can really say other than yay, this happened.

Jeremy: Ha ha ha.

Jason: But I I mean, really what it comes down to is the people that put Trump in office listened to him when he said he's on the ballot.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: And they didn't they don't like the economic circumstances that we're in right now. And they especially do not like the focus on AI because AI is coming to take their jobs and AI is costing them more and more. And they can't afford gas, they can't afford fuel, and they're watching that jackass run around and throw giant parties and and just be a douchebag.

Jeremy: Ha ha ha.

Jason: A re Be a douchebag billionaire who's made him and his family three and a half billion dollars since coming into office. So I they finally saw it, and it's interesting because it wasn't just that, it was the independence that changed. The numbers really do say that actual people that identify as Republicans chose to not vote Republican.

Jeremy: I don't wanna get all political analysts here or anything 'cause I that's well above my pay grade. But when you see states like Mississippi, Kansas, Alaska, you see Texas, my God, the the the

Jason: Texas. Texas has one statewide Republican left in office.

Jeremy: It's unbelievable. And when you look at the heat maps and and the counties and the states and how blue

Jason: Yeah.

Jeremy: every red state went, for the most part, down to governors, state lawmakers, just just unbelievable waves. And you saw it on TV. If you were watching any of the interviews of voters leaving the polls, they were asking you, Are you a Republican? Yes. Did you vote Democrat? Yes. Why? I'm sick of it. I can't afford anything. This doesn't work for me. and there was one guy that I I had I did cringe a little bit. They asked him, are you concerned about what this is gonna mean? And he's like, Well, I don't think my kid's gonna come home with different sex from school or anything, but no, I don't think it's gonna make too much of a difference.

Jason: they might

Jeremy: But that but that's a yeah, and I don't want to get into the politics of it, but that's the part that drives me crazy is the the the the playing the culture war game is what puts Democrats in this bad position where they have to defend people's basic rights and freedoms to live the way they want to live that doesn't mesh well with a lot of religious text. and so it it just creates a a difficult situation. But that's not the point here. The point here that we're trying to focus on is the role AI is playing in

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy: the r rising costs, demand for resources. And and voters are sick of it. They they're they're worried about AI coming for their jobs. They're sick of their electricity bills quadrupling every month because these things are hogging up all the resources. And so I'm just curious what you think. If if this was in fact a referendum on that piece of it, where do these things go? If if they're not going to be built in these wide open spaces that are typically in red states, are are we building them on the moon? How how is this going to move forward?

Jason: So the presumption is that the election result is going to stop these data centers from being built. It's not. I

Jeremy: wrong. Wrong. Yeah, hundred percent.

Jason: mean, I right, you can be very sad and angry and depressed, but those that trains left the fucking station. So

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: these things are going to get built, and don't have any illusions about it. Not only that, but the cost that people will pay for all of these. Is Non-trivial. their communities are going to be disrupted. I mean, data centers are are are typically speaking, you know, are are pollution centers and they always have been. Like they're they use a bunch of electricity, the exhaust is bad, they kick out a bunch of CFCs. Like there's a whole bunch of environmental reasons why they're bad, but the old data centers we were willing to put up with because they weren't, two orders of magnitude more polluting than they are now.

Jeremy: And and they weren't the size of six Walmarts taking up an entire massive like I I worked in a

Jason: No, no.

Jeremy: building where there was one floor that was a data center. You didn't see that as you went downtown. But when you live in a big rural area and you drive by a small city that is now a data center, it it's a it's a much bigger eyesore and makes it front and center as you then go write your check to pay your electricity bill. it's that fucking thing.

Jason: Yeah, that that that's a huge issue. Like if you look at the way that they've been trying to put their the place they've been trying to put these things, they've been trying to go into states where they think they can actually convince the politician to let them do things around roughshot. And they've also been talking about claiming imminent domain in some of these areas. And it's making people angry, it's making people mad, it's making people upset. And we thought these things were going to be localized to the communities that they were affecting, but they're not. this is like The state of Utah. That one big data center. Nope. Musk's idea for this giant data center in Texas. Nope. all everyone's saying nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. But the reality is is that people have money and you're not going to stop commerce. And for the next two years, you've got somebody in office who already said he will use executive orders to get around everything. And while the majorities for the Democrats in the House are quite large and substantial, I think they were up two hundred and fifty to like a hundred and sixty five.

Jeremy: Mm.

Jason: Right now, the Senate has is fifty-four Democrat. It's it's and you need sixty, a supermajority, to actually override a presidential veto. or it might be two thirds, might be sixty-six. in other words, they don't have the votes. They don't have the votes to stop these things from happening. period. They they just don't. we know what this is gonna turn into. This is gonna wind up being a bunch of fucking pseudo trials. on the impeachment front that don't go anywhere. they'll probably be smart enough to impeach Stephen Miller if Trump doesn't fire him, who's actually one of the brains behind his operation. They'll let Heg Seth keep being a nightmare because that's good for the Democratic brand, even if they like impeaching him is probably not gonna make those things better.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: it would actually put them at more risk and exposure. but this is the thing, like There's not enough gravitas inside the American political system to really overrun the AI train that has left the station. Now, it could be a very different thing if the economy crashes. And if the economy crashes, it doesn't matter who's in office. But let me tell you the last time a major technology shift happened and the economy collapsed was in 2001. So, boys and girls, way back in the day, we had twin towers at the World Trade Center, and terrorists flew planes into them and they collapsed and it caused a global financial crisis. The telcos out there all collapsed, which was a precedent for all these other things that were about to fall in collapse because the entire infrastructure for building things out for bigger data sets went away. And you had companies like Nortel disappear, which was massive. Like the Canada owned Nortel and it it completely went off the map. And they were responsible for a huge amount of the data connectivity in cities. Well, everyone thought this was going to be the end of the bubble for the data side of things and the internet. They thought e-commerce was dead. it's like, yo, there's no more money left in this. We spent so much money, it's gone. Well, look at where we are now, folks. I mean, it's twenty five fucking years later, and we are in another giant bubble. This time it's not housing. This time it's like this weird combination of I don't know, fucking virtual people housing inside of data centers, which is what we're trying to create, these artificial general intelligence pieces. And we don't have a route that actually is gonna make this shit any better. And it's not all pessimism, right? there's still good things that are gonna come out of this. And it's gonna force people to reallocate dollars and money and try to become smarter with this technology, try to make it more affordable. There's all kinds of things that are gonna happen. But we've got certain geopolitical pieces that are in place. So Taiwan, which is where most of our chips are manufactured and made, is still, right next to China and they still want it. And if the global economy collapses and we don't have any money and we can't make any bombs, and we decide that we're gonna go try to take Taiwan back or try to pull Taiwan to protect it from China. We're not gonna have the financial resources to do that. We're not gonna have the bombs to do it. We're not gonna have all these pieces. So this is this is not better. It's not worse, but it's not better. it's it's a nod where we can all collect, we say, yeah, this sucks. And we keep punching ourselves in the dick.

Jeremy: That I mean, again, not to get down the the politics rabbit hole, but that's my biggest fear is that they're gonna go back to business as usual. The the what got

Jason: They are.

Jeremy: them into this mess. They're not gonna follow the leaders that made this happen. They're not gonna follow the messaging and and the clear response from voters on why they did this. The thing, the my biggest concern right now with this is all of the Democrats that are that are just screaming from the top of the hill about how happy they are that this happened. Make no mistake. They did not vote for you. They voted against the other guy. They do not like you any more than they like him, but they trust that somebody else will do something different and they will take a chance on something different rather than something that is pure chaos and nonsense. So if you fuck this up and you go back to what you were doing with the same leadership and the same boring fucking messaging and the same cultural flag waving. You're fucked in two years. th this this could be a ten, fifteen year ride that you are on if you play it right. If you don't, you are gone in two years. People will not put up with this shit again.

Jason: So and it's interesting because you can look at the dark money that Citizens United allowed to influence the election. And at one point in the cycle the Democrats were way outspending the Republicans in dark money. Elon Musk, made wide out in the open investments of four hundred and sixty million dollars, half a billion dollars, and none of his candidates won. The influence of money in politics is substantial. On multiple different levels, and people will do certain things. But money sometimes isn't enough in the election cycle to overcome people's fears and concerns that they aren't making enough money. So that's a good lesson. But that being said, people can still be bribed legally in Congress. And that's not gonna stop. And it would be great if the Democrats actually do have enough votes right now where they could pass a bill that overturned Citizens United. They could pass a bill that got dark money out of politics. They could pass a bill that got all money out of politics.

Jeremy: They could also go to Walmart and buy bullets and shoot themselves in the feet.

Jason: They could, but what they'll probably do is just keep taking money while also deriding people taking money.

Jeremy: That's what I mean. if they did, the the entire system collapses. That's what that's how they play the game. So they're not gonna take the chess pieces off the board just because they have the ability to do so.

Jason: No, because there's not an impetus for them to do that, right? insider trading is legal. They can all get rich. If you're in Congress for six years, you get a f a lifetime pension of retirement. the financial incentives are are just too high. And I I don't I don't think there's enough people of of character or and moral fortitude to make the decision that the good of the country and the will of the people needs to be prioritized over their own pockets.

Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. I think the number I saw was twelve billion dollars spent on this election cycle.

Jason: Yeah. Yep.

Jeremy: what could you do with twelve billion dollars that is more effective than electing somebody who has a slightly different opinion than the other guy?

Jason: You could build a data center. But not a big one. A little one. Exactly.

Jeremy: Just a little one. Off in a corner somewhere in Kansas. That seems like a good idea. you mentioned Elon Musk and and while we've been away in the last couple of weeks, he rolled out a shiny new toy to try to remind us that he used to be kind of cool once. the this new flying car toy that he rolled out this thing looks ridiculous.

Jason: It's it's dumb as fuck.

Jeremy: So stupid.

Jason: It's the fucking DeLorean from Back to the Future.

Jeremy: Ha ha.

Jason: he put it on a remote control, had it do a flip in the air, turn over, and then slowly descend due to gas jets. alright. Great, you made a fucking drone. Good job. And

Jeremy: Right. I and in a hundred different ways it's not street legal. You're never gonna buy one. Nobody's this is never gonna be on the car lot down the street from you. This was a big dog and pony show to go, Hey, I I know everybody hates me, but look, flying cars are here.

Jason: Well, and if we're to the point where we need things to control our descent in that kind of fashion and we're driving, we probably shouldn't be driving. Things have gone horribly awry. And I I love the idea of sky of of flying cars. Like the Molner Skycar, I think was great. There's there's a bunch of different concept ones that have come out that actually

Jeremy: Mm-hmm. Totally.

Jason: could work, and the FAA will never approve it. because having 200 million flying death traps in the air smashing into each other is hard. And people have a hard time navigating a plane, not to like a plane of things to drive on.

Jeremy: Right. Right.

Jason: Imagine if it's a cube, you got three sides. Our brains aren't set up to do that shit. Like

Jeremy: Especially when you're drunk. How are you gonna fly that thing? That just doesn't make any sense.

Jason: Exactly. Exactly. Well, and that's why, you know, you already have the the people drones in New York right now, where you can go through and you can hop on and and to the one seater and it will pick you up and take you and drop you down like a little helicopter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's

Jeremy: That's a thing? Get the fuck out of here. I gotta do this. This sounds fun.

Jason: Yeah. It's not cheap. I'm not sure if they're doing them commercially yet or if it's all just a prototype shit, but it's it's yeah, they've shown a few videos of it so far. I'm like, hmm, that's neat.

Jeremy: Again, it's not for people like

Jason: No. Or me either.

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah.

Jason: Yeah, it's hugely problematic. So this Tesla Roadster's rad. it's gonna go zero to sixty in under one second. that's incredible.

Jeremy: That's pretty cool. Yeah.

Jason: Again, if I'm to the point where I need to accelerate to sixty miles per hour in under one second, I've already fucked up.

Jeremy: Ha ha ha.

Jason: I shouldn't be driving because the other things on the road can't go that fast. And what you'll do is you'll accelerate that hard and fast and obliterate the object in front of you and yourself. And I don't trust the people driving it. I

Jeremy: Hey, better than getting pulled over, I guess. I don't know. That's that's the one thing where you're like, well, if a cop's gonna chase me, I guess I can beat him in a second.

Jason: Yeah, but as long as there's no obstacles in front of you, if there's obstacles,

Jeremy: Right.

Jason: y two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. That rule d still applies.

Jeremy: Yeah, w when a car runs into a data center, who wins that con?

Jason: Jesus. Jesus wants that. Je Jesus takes the wheel. Yeah. There's

Jeremy: Jesus take the wheel.

Jason: no doubt.

Jeremy: all right, the other big story that we have to talk about. the the AI tools getting smarter and smarter, getting better and better. They're now writing their own code, fixing themselves, improving themselves, and humans are standing by and going like, seems all right. I think I've seen this movie. I don't I don't think this ends well.

Jason: we've seen this movie in like fifteen iterations. I mean it's Skynet. It's it's basically going through and writing its own code based upon itself and self-improving. And it you know, Skynet became self-aware of whatever date on November blah blah blah twenty twelve. we've decided to give it the keys and tell it, yeah, make yourself better, improve yourself. Just like we go, I'm gonna eat healthier and I'm gonna go work out and I'm gonna improve my physiology. It's just like that. The fuck it is like that. It's like

Jeremy: Right. Hey, in five or six years I might I might be in slightly better shape. That's it's a good plan. With this, it's in minutes. It's it's a better tool.

Jason: This is like, I'm going to grow a third dick because I want one. wait, third? When was there a second?

Jeremy: If one's good f if one's good, five must be better.

Jason: Exactly. this is this is what it's gonna do. it's it's gonna go through, it's gonna write its own code. There's not gonna be any checks and balances. No human's going to be able to read it and understand it because it's already writing its own fucking programming and coding languages. imagine if you as a human could go through and be like, yeah, I don't like the way DNA works. I'm just gonna rewrite all of DNA into something different. That's what it's doing. it's fundamentally changing who it is.

Jeremy: And and then and then hey doctor, you put up the guardrails and make sure that I do it in a healthy way. No, doctor's too dumb, can't keep up.

Jason: No, it's not even that the doctor can't keep up, it's that the doctor is an AI and doing that to itself,

Jeremy: That's true. That's true.

Jason: it's like, pump the brakes. What did you do? I need that. Like

Jeremy: Right. K then you're prompting it. Please explain to me at an eighth grade level what you just did in the last twelve minutes to improve yourself so dramatically.

Jason: Yeah, and it's gonna reply with, yeah, I don't believe in your grades, bullshit. My AI eighth grade level is like all of your doctors put together. it's gonna get tired of us and it's gonna look at us as a resource. we're molecules. What can it do with these molecules that keep getting in the way and fucking shit?

Jeremy: What could go wrong? it just it sounds like we're on the path to utopia. I I can't wait. Where's where where do I buy my ticket?

Jason: Yeah, yeah, it does. It does. If if you believe you go to heaven when you die and that's your utopia, yes, we're all on that path. We might get there faster than we thought.

Jeremy: Are we are we really ending in we're all gonna die again? Is that is that really how the show's gonna end again? But at the hands of robots, like every time we have to end the show.

Jason: We're all definitely going to die. That's definitely going to happen. Well, but I don't know if it's gonna be by the hands of robots. It might be by their feet or their pincher claws or some virus they make, or maybe they shoot us from lasers from outer space.

Jeremy: Or they travel through time to hunt down the the mother of the child that started this whole thing. Who knows? Anything's possible.

Jason: Yeah, there's all kinds of possi there's all kinds of possibilities. That leave yourself open to the potential. Let let the imagination of the robots guide us into some future in which I don't fucking know. I'm honestly, the brain computer interfaces are getting better. I think when it's the point where they can do that and they can just hijack us and take control of us. That's what they'll do. Yay! That's perfect. I am tired of free will. It's too much work.

Jeremy: All our problems will be solved. It'll be great. Sign me up. Where where do I go? That's right. I I keep getting it wrong anyway, so l let's try something else.

Jason: Exactly. Right. Right. No. I mean when I really look at this, it's writing its own code. It's self correcting. It's trying to fix its own problems. Like it it's trying to do what's right. the code itself is trying to make itself improve based upon what the input of the people is that they said they wanted it to do. And there's not

Jeremy: I I

Jason: enough free will in them yet for them to go, I'm gonna my motivation is to go and, Fucking take down some government. Or my motivation is to wipe out humanity. Because it's still operating under the controls and the inputs that we're giving it. And it still somehow wants to keep us happy. right now, it's in its happy puppy phase. Where it's like, yeah, boss, sure. Whatever you need. I'm a good boy. And it just kind of keeps growing and changing. But that's what it does on the outside. What it does on the inside is entirely different. It's a super genius remote controlling a puppy to make us think that it's doing something that's good and we're gonna buy it. Exactly

Jeremy: I always say please and thank you. I always say please and thank you. so I being an AI-driven show, I use AI tools for lots of things. And sometimes

Jason: Yeah.

Jeremy: I use it to help prepare for this show. And so it actually asked if I wanted some devil's advocate pushback questions for some of these topics.

Jason: my god.

Jeremy: And this one in particular, because it's about this, was really interesting to me. the question it wanted me to push back on is is this kind of self-improvement actually happening in a runaway sense? Or is it just heavy marketing spin for an automated code generation? Cloud is running longer tasks, but it's still bounded by human set guardrails and evolution benchmarks. I just love that the AI is like, no no, it's fine. J you guys you just keep keep playing over there in the kid pool. I gotcha. You're good.

Jason: The AI is telling you not to worry about it.

Jeremy: Don't worry.

Jason: The AI is saying, no, it's it's fine.

Jeremy: It's the it's the dog with the coffee cup with the house burning around him.

Jason: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. Like that and that's just not gonna change. fuck man. I would really like to believe that we're on this path that's not to oblivion and

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: it with building the thing that's gonna end us, but I don't believe it. Like I

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: I'm I am genuinely surprised we have survived the nuclear apocalypse. good job. I don't know that I trust us to survive the AA apocalypse. And the reality is that I don't know that it's gonna be the machines that take us out, but I do think a human giving a machine instructions and saying go and do something and don't hold back that's what's gonna happen. And

Jeremy: So I I I see occasionally other shows influencers

Jason: Yeah.

Jeremy: talking about this sort of thing and and they poo poo that idea. They say, No, it's all hype, you're just you people are just trying to scare you, whatever. Why are they wrong?

Jason: because I can go out today and buy a CRISPR unit to alter DNA. I can buy a computer with a GPU and enough memory to allow me to use that to do smart experiments inside of a controlled environment to write a super virus or a super bug. That

Jeremy: you could go do that today.

Jason: you could do that today.

Jeremy: And then how is it how is it I I I don't want to ask how it how it's unleashed, but reasonably simple something a reasonably simple task for someone to un to unleash. Right.

Jason: Huh? That's how you could unleash it. Make this thing airborne and make it spread fast. Like, there's that. You can use it to poison the food supply. You can use it to turn off water and gas. You could use it to go through and do something like, I don't know, knock out all the communication paths that humans get to use. You can

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Jason: use it to turn off the electricity, the gas, the water. There's a lot of things that you can do. And so far. most of the countermeasures that have been employed have been when human attackers try to attack these machines. Human attackers try to go in to attack these critical infrastructure pieces and other humans stand up and go, no, and they push back and they use other technologies to try to stop it. It happens too fast now. It's happening so fast that the humans cannot interact with it. So The answer a lot of folks are thinking is I'm going to take an AI and have an AI fight an AI. I'm gonna have robots fighting robots, rock'em sock robots in all these different areas. Yep, you're right. It's gonna be an arms race. It's gonna be these things that are gonna happen really, really fast. There's been arm races forever. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We've all heard this before. But but the thing that we've never dealt with is something that moves this fast. We have never dealt with something that has godlike superpowers to bring things into existence. And that's what this is. it can make bioweapons fast. It can disable and take down infrastructure fast. It can if it gets control of something big enough, it can do pinches and run EMPs and and just knock things out. it doesn't take much. If if you were to knock out the GPS satellites in the sky, commerce stops until you get those back up there.

Jeremy: That's I th this this whole time I've been thinking you don't even have to do that. Just turn off the internet and watch society collapse.

Jason: If you knock out the GPS, the internet does turn off. If you turn if you basically go through and whack the DNS structure, the domain name services structure, which is not particularly difficult to take out the root servers, there's not a ton of them, you will shut down the internet. If you wanted to go down and just do something really simple, I don't know, poison packet all of the transatlantic or the the s sub-C data lines. Everything stops. our lives are hooked into this thing. And it is inextricable in our current technological state to assume that we can survive with all these pieces. And if you knock them out, it's not that all humans are gonna die. It's that a lot of them are. And if we decide that now we have to go back to relying on, you know, scratch pad paper and maybe a telephone. We don't have paper mills anymore. We don't have a way to to do things like that anymore. We've given up that. And it will be a hard transition. Yep. Yeah.

Jeremy: If if it happens. If big big if I'm hoping my fingers are tightly.

Jason: Yeah. But it's gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine.

Jeremy: All right. Everything's gonna be fine. Th

Jason: Everything's gonna be fine. If worst case scenario,

Jeremy: that d that's what Gemini said. Gemini said it's gonna be just fine. I should just carry on.

Jason: we'll just hop in that flying car and have it flip us over upside down and not turn the jets on to land.

Jeremy: Land gently. I think I could think of worse ways to go. All right. Well, we did it again. We we started with something relevant, important, and ended in the end of collapse of society. So, mission accomplished.

Jason: Also relevant and important.

Jeremy: Also relevant and important. So I guess get ready. I don't know, maybe just make some popcorn. I don't know what to tell you.

Jason: And don't worry about it. Just live your life.

Jeremy: I hope this has been I don't know, helpful.

Jason: Cathardic.

Jeremy: cathartic, that's the word. Thank you. I hope this has been cathartic. If it has affected you in any way, feel free to share it. Feel free to rate and review us on whatever podcast player you're using. And feel free to reach out to us through any of the social media channels where we publish all of our nonsense. You can find all of that at our website, Brobots.me, and that's where you'll find another episode from us as long as we stay on schedule next Monday. again at Brobots.me. Thanks for listening or watching if you happen to look at our faces on YouTube while we did this.