What the AI Industry Got Wrong About Public Backlash

Even those within the AI industry have been very anxious about the technology. Worries about its potential to create destabilizing job losses, or rogue AI that could lead to human extinction. But for all their anxiety, they missed the thing that's become the most publicly salient: how upset people would be about data centers. Data center construction has been happening for a long time, and it used to be relatively uncontroversial. In fact, cities and states would often design their tax code to incentivize data center construction. On this episode, we speak with independent writer and Substacker Jasmine Sun, who recently traveled to Wisconsin and Michigan to report about the communities and activists trying to stop development, what the pushback is really all about and what future developers will have to do in order to be welcomed in. See Odd Lots Live in LA September 2026 https://events.bloombergevents.com/event/ODDLOTSLA/summary (Source: Bloomberg)