The Washington Post editorial board went to the trouble of marking what it called “Bernie Sanders‘ worst idea yet” on Wednesday, but the progressive US senator shrugged at the label and didn’t appear likely to end his push for a moratorium on the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers.
The conservative-leaning editors wrote glowingly of the “mind-blowing amounts of information” that AI data centers can process and dismissively said that businesses that have invested billions of dollars in AI have erroneously been cast as the “villain in the socialist imagination.”
They decried “AI doomerism” by politicians and accused lawmakers like Sanders (I-Vt.) of “fearmongering” about the data centers’ water consumption and environmental harms—but neglected to mention that the rapid expansion of the massive centers has sparked grassroots outrage, with communities in states including Michigan and Wisconsin demanding that tech giants stay out of their towns, fearing skyrocketing electricity bills among other impacts.
Sanders emphasized that the Post and its owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have a vested interest in dismissing efforts to stop the AI build-out that President Donald Trump has demanded with his executive order aimed at stopping states from regulating the industry.
Bezos, one of the richest people on the planet, created an AI startup last year with $6.2 billion in funding, some of it from his personal fortune, and Amazon—where Bezos is still the primary shareholder—has announced plans to invest $200 billion in AI and robotics.
“What a surprise,” said Sanders sardonically. “The Washington Post doesn’t want a moratorium on AI data centers.”
Ben Inskeep, a program director for Citizens Action Coalition in Indiana, suggested the editorial board couldn’t express its opposition to Sanders’ proposal for a moratorium without including “an admission that it is a paid attack dog for Jeff Bezos,” pointing to its required disclosure that Bezos’ company is in fact investing billions of dollars in AI.
On social media, Sanders followed his response to the Post‘s attack with a video in which he doubled down on his objections to AI, despite the editorial board’s accusation that he and others “grandstand” on the issue and its insistence that he should “be ecstatic about how much AI can help workers.”
Sanders said in the video that “AI and robotics are a huge threat to the working class of this country.”
“We have got to be prepared to say as loud and clear as we can that this technology is not just going to benefit the billionaires who own it,” he said, “but it’s going to work for the working families of our country.”
