Scott Wiener, the California state senator who authored legislation aimed at curbing the risks of advanced AI, has won a tight congressional race to succeed Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. Shortly after his victory was declared, he spoke about the dangers he sees in rapidly advancing AI, using the phrase “recursive self-improvement” repeatedly. “We need to slow this down,” he warned, adding that society could “sleepwalk into a disaster.” Though he describes himself as only “cautiously optimistic” about Congress’s ability to rein in the technology, his role could prove influential in shaping federal AI policy.
Meanwhile, the public backlash against data centers may be less about progress and more about electricity. Reporting from Ashburn, Virginia, a hub often called the world’s largest data center cluster, suggests that the real point of contention is how these facilities obtain their power. Drawing electricity from the existing grid and generating it onsite each provoke distinct forms of local resistance. Industry efforts to polish its public image may help, but they cannot resolve the fundamental strain created by the sector’s enormous energy demands.
Elsewhere in tech news, the FBI is reportedly investigating Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang over a personal matter, though former President Trump has said he doesn’t believe Huang should be concerned. France has accused Iran of hacking supermarket refrigeration systems, and Australia is considering criminal penalties for rogue AI. The Pentagon, meanwhile, plans to deploy patrol satellites around the Moon, with the first five potentially launching in 2029. China, for its part, continues to expand its marine ranching program, which has built 169 demonstration sites and released billions of juvenile fish and shellfish into the ocean since 2015.
Source: The Download: Pelosi’s successor targets AI and data centers face power woes via MIT Technology Review