Some thoughts on the election and what it means for the future of AI. Expect gridlock. And this is a great thing. It will stop the most aggressively idiotic ideas (kill switches/total bans) from getting through as Trump goes Mr. Veto. Would have been even better if the house split, but same difference mostly. What the world needs now is time. What do I mean? People's first reaction to any tech is usually fear, but as they get their hands on it, figure out how it helps them in their lives, opinions can and do change gradually and then all at once. As technology diffuses into the world, it's almost never anything like what the hypsters or fear mongers warn about and always something in between. Early fears prove nonsensical (cell phones cause brain cancer!) and those fears get replaced by more mundane problems/challenges (my kid spends too much time online and isn't socializing enough.) Build outs of AI datacenters will not stop. There is a scarcity of compute and prices are just too expensive for tokens. As SemiAnalysis wrote, the permits and everything else are already locked in through 2027. The problems will likely be in 2028 if some of the most idiotic populist nonsense gets traction. ( But those problems will be just another footgun for American because it means we will be moving our industrial capacity overseas AGAIN. A horrible and avoidable outcome. AI datacenters will simply move those high paying blue collar jobs overseas and countries that welcome power and tech build outs and tax incentives will get the datacenters. Long the Middle East and Asia. And it will move DCs into space too, but I am not long space yet because only one guy can do it, Elon. If the "bubble" pops it will be because of the usual reasons (too much credit, other price pressures, etc) but it will not change the fact that this is one of the most, if not the most, important tech developments in the history of the world, big enough to put the printing press, the steam engine, the invention of money itself, the tractor and the Internet in the distant rearview mirror. How you will use it will change as builders figure out the right form factor/interface. You can't just graft the old model onto the new and it takes time and energy to understand what the right balance is. But anyone hoping that AI will not be useful and will just go away need to stop hitting the crack pipe so hard. You already use AI every single day without even thinking about it. Your anti-lock breaks. When you search Google (long before the AI at the top.) When you use Google maps. When you use your cell phone to find directions. Many drugs that you take were found through various AI discovery methods and drug screening methods. Protein folding already won the Noble prize and is accelerating medicine. Multiple anti-cancer drugs, designed by AI to target a specific person's cancer are moving forward and that is incredible stuff. Self driving cars are saving actual lives right now for something humans do very, very badly. Humans kill 1.2 million people on the road every year and injure 50 million more and AI is already an order of magnitude better at driving. There is no timeline, of any future in the multiverse, where AI is not useful and people just live without it. All tech in history goes through a rapid build out and then breakdown phase as people figure out the best places for it and new business models to make it work in an endless push/pull of competing forces and fears and desires. Even if this is a bubble (which it might be), it doesn't make the tech any less useful and it will only become more so in the years to come. died in the early heat death of the Dot Com bubble Internet but we got Uber/Lyft/Airbnb/Spotify/TikTok/QR codes/digital payments/cell phones and a thousand other useful services and inventions years later. Things take time. Every early tech causes fear. But the faster people get their hands on something, the faster that fear disappears like smoke in the wind and it just becomes another thing in our lives, like rocks or grass or a phone. Also, this election wave was inevitable. This is how America does it. Without fail. We vote in one group. They claim a majority and the mandate of Heaven, only to get tossed out on their ass 4 or 8 years later. It's by design. The Founding Father's knew absolute power corrupts absolutely, so best to design a beautiful, blunt instrument that just rotates power in and out every few years. Works beautifully so far, if imperfectly.

Hysteria might be my least favorite human mental state. I hate watching people freak out over wildly exaggerated or imaginary dangers: nuclear energy, climate catastrophe, and now data centers. Not to mention that virus "pandemic". Once collective fear takes hold, reason goes out the window.

The hysteria over the unsurprising resent decisions of the Roberts Court shines a light on the real problem facing America today. Of the three branches of government, we currently have an activist Judiciary, a powerful Executive, but a flat tire when it comes to the Legislative branch. Birthright citizenship, for example, was not expected to be overturned by the Supreme Court. Congress could easily establish common sense legislation that would define more clearly the original purpose and boundaries intended by the 14th Amendment. That would, however, require John Thune to act like an American statesman rather than a RINO hack, so there is, as usual, no hope. As long as the pansy-ass Republicans mince around the halls of Congress, we are doomed.