Lawfare Daily: A Trip Through Pennsylvania’s Nascent AI Data Center Industry

[Intro]

Maia Woluchem: We're just pushing towards deregulation in so many ways that makes it much harder for folks to not only just understand what the harms might be, but also protect against the things that we already know are true.

Tyler McBrien: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare with Maia Woluchem, the director of Data and Society's Trustworthy Infrastructures program alongside one of the program's researchers, Livia Garofalo and Joan Mukogosi, an affiliate with the program and a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics.

Joan Mukogosi: I don't, you know, know if it's very compelling to see oneself as a soldier in the AI race. Because what does that really mean for your day-to-day life? Does that mean that your electricity bill is gonna go up and that's what you're delivering to the cause, or that your water is gonna be undrinkable? And so, yeah, I, I think that that narrative is really strong from that federal and investment perspective, but on the ground it seems much more complicated.

Tyler McBrien: Today we're talking about what Maia, Livia and Joan learned on several recent trips across Pennsylvania, where they researched the impacts of the state's nascent AI data center industry.

[Main Podcast]

So, Maia, I wanna start with you to set the scene for us, you and, and members of your team, people on this, in this conversation right now have taken a few trips to Pennsylvania, as I understand this year. So I wanna start with what motivated those trips? Why, why Pennsylvania? What were you looking for and, and what did you see?

Maia Woluchem: Yes, for the past year my team and I, Livia, Joan and I have been taking a road trip across the state of Pennsylvania, East to West and back again to try to understand a little bit more about what is happening across the state when AI infrastructure lands in many places around the state.

They could be really rural post-industrial towns. They could be in the middle of Pittsburgh, which, you know, by many measures, it's a little bit more sort of further along in its kind of post-industrial history. But the big story that we're trying to understand is what is changing on the ground, sort of sociopolitically economically, when AI infrastructure lands on places that have this really deep history of sort of industrial development and in many cases, industrial decline.

Why we picked Pennsylvania? I think my teammates can speak beautifully about the history of Pennsylvania to this team. It's a place where all of us have really deep roots, and I think just broadly has a real importance for the nation in terms of its, in many ways kind of responsibility every election cycle. The kind of fictions that people tell about what the meaning of an industrial state and a state that's changing as much as Pennsylvania is.

And I think it can really tell us so much about kind of where the country is going in many directions, whether it's economically, socially, politically, in a whole range of ways. But maybe I might turn it to Joan and Livia to talk a little bit about the state and sort of why Pennsylvania has been just so heartwarming for us on, on the road.

Tyler McBrien: Please, Joan or Livia, either one of you can jump in.

Joan Mukogosi: Yeah, I can talk about growing up in Pittsburgh. I think, you know, this project was a great opportunity to go back to my hometown and reflect on, as Maia was talking about some of those sort of post-industrial imaginaries that are sort of present when you grow up there and how they're changing as these industries, these AI industry comes, comes to town.

And so I guess even personally, that personal connection to be able to go back was wonderful. But in a broader sense we're seeing this rush of investment in Pittsburgh and, and across the state that made this sort of exploration really timely.

Tyler McBrien: Livia, I wonder if you could give us a better sense of what we're talking about here when we talk about AI infrastructure whether it's it's data centers or other types of infrastructure? And I also am curious about what is already underway and what is already being built or has been built and, and what's sort of in the pipeline and, and planned for a lot of these communities?

Livia Garofalo: So another reason why we chose Pennsylvania, I live in Philadelphia, I have for the last five years is also this really particular mix of post-industrial, industrial and rural communities that seem to have, have attracted sort of AI investors, given it's very diverse landscape, but also one of the key reasons for Pennsylvania being attractive is also it's sort of ecological and sort of landscape profile, right?

It's rivers and it, the possibility of extraction, which has been part of the state of Pennsylvania since the late 1700s. One of the initial trips we took was to Bethlehem Steel, which is in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which used to build, you know, the, the beams, the steel beams that built the Golden Gate Bridge and New York's skyscrapers. And so we're seeing kind of data centers is really what we're kind of interested in in this project and how these investors are pitching these communities to revive ideals of sort of a renaissance of, of towns that are, have gone through economic hardship.

And so that's one of the things that we are interested in seeing is, you know, a data center is also a very vague concept to many folks. And what it looks like on the ground, it's a warehouse. So the difference to someone in a community between an Amazon warehouse and a data center might not be apparent. But the narratives around, for example, employment and energy and electrical bills are different. And you know, we can, we'll probably talk about Three Mile Island, but that's, that's one of the reasons and one of our pit stops throughout this, this trip.

Tyler McBrien: So, Livia, as, as you just articulated so well, Pennsylvania is, is such a politically salient place. It's has such historical significance for the U.S. and I think you, you all address the role of narrative and storytelling in, in your work. So on the one hand, you could, you could paint this picture of wow, what a beautiful story. It's, Pennsylvania was at the center of building the country's infrastructure of the past, and now it's given this chance for this renewal and to build the infrastructure of the future in, in data centers, et cetera.

I'm obviously painting an overly optimistic picture there to say the least. How does that narrative or fantasy even gel with what you saw on the ground? Maia, we can, we can go back to you and, and not just what you saw on the ground, but also what you expect to happen from, from your, your own research.

Maia Woluchem: It is true that the storytelling about Pittsburgh, like a generation or Pennsylvania, I'm sorry, a generation or two ago is, is one that's really rich because I think in many ways it was, you know, these are working class jobs in which people had really strong unions. They were able to buy homes off of the backs of these you know, very industrial jobs. They built families in those places.

When we went to Bethlehem, people would talk often about, you know, you might have a robber baron in that town, but at least that person lived there and they built the library. And you know, you see it across the state that you might have, you know, universities like Carnegie Mellon that are built on the backs of that kind of deep local investment that was also very much in place. And so, you know, in some ways that storytelling, I think it was a really positive thing in people's lives, you know, given many of the certain externalities that we also know about from that time in the industrial revolution.

Now that said, this is a very different sort of picture of what development looks like because many of these jobs that folks are so excited about coming to those to, to towns in central, eastern, and western Pennsylvania just don't have the kind of features of what you know, we hope might build a dignified life. So often we find that many of the roles that are coming into data centers might be contract jobs, or that are not necessarily, you know, hinged on the people who live in that particular place.

We’re often seeing that the job numbers that are discussed are, you know, largely construction jobs. They're construction when you need to turn on the big data center or you need to build the warehouse, or you might need certain sorts of labor to kickstart like a, a new fracking well, or, you know, water infrastructure that you need to sort of set up that kind of longstanding investment.

And then once that investment comes to town we find that, you know, these are not huge employment centers. They're not, not only are they not huge employment centers, we're gonna find that many of those jobs are gonna go away. But they're also, they're not the kind of stable family forming things that you might expect would kickstart a rural place that has been waiting since the sort of decline of steel for a kind of reinvention of that particular place.

It is really unfortunate because many of these deals, you know, in addition to promising, you know, often great employment numbers, often other sorts of community benefits are also competing in many ways with other things that really actually could benefit a small town in a range of ways. At the same time that this is happening in Pennsylvania, there's a really serious fight over the state budget and what's happening with the funding for public transportation or state universities, of which I'm an alum and I think, you know, are wonderful benefits for residents. Hospital systems are also going down.

I think all of the pressure of what's happening with the federal budget, the state budget, really, really puts these towns in a very delicate place. Because you know, in absence of that deep public investment, they're having to make these decisions about, well, maybe it's better for us to be part of this newfound industrial revolution, even if we know it's gonna be really short lived. Or it might be, you know, it just might not impact us in the way that we might hope because it's one of the few options that we have in this time where, you know, a lot of public investment is just dwindling in every direction.

Tyler McBrien: I wanna pick up on that point actually. Well, first I wanna say I, I feel like things are bad when people start waxing nostalgic about robber barons in the Gilded Age.

But I mean, to your, to your last point, Joan, I wonder if you could pick up this point of, I think I was reading somewhere that you spoke with someone in eastern Pennsylvania, for example, who talked about this really hardnosed realistic trade-offs of, well, it's, it's not perfect, but at least it's bringing some jobs in the short term and it means we're not building an ICE facility or, or a detention center that we know is, is, is actually, will have like a lot of negative outcomes on our community.

Joan, I, I wonder, you know, how you heard about those trade-offs and, and, and how you think through these tough decisions or if it's just a false binary that, that, you know, the Trump administration is setting up with this new industrial policy.

Joan Mukogosi: I think one of the best things about this work is speaking to folks on the ground, in the communities where these data centers and where the energy infrastructure for the data centers are being proposed and built. And yeah, in our trip in eastern Pennsylvania, we had conversations with folks about that exact trade off. And I think, you know, as Maia was saying, these, many of these communities are facing a list of problems that really data centers are presented as this fix.

And I think that what we've heard is that yes, there is this choice to have the data center or the prison and the data center sort of seems better than perhaps the prison. And of course there are other considerations when it comes to taxes and different types of zoning that can help or harm the community. But I think folks are also just sort of looking for change, for jobs, and perhaps yes, like having that sort of optimistic or nostalgic vision of what the past was like in terms of those big industries.

But I think also thinking about the steel industry, for example. It was horrible when it comes to, you know, pollution and safety and it really harmed so many of the workers that, you know, while they were bringing in money suffered in so many other ways. And I think again, we see a trade off with data centers and their impact on water and our, on our environment. And so there are, these communities are, are faced with a, a series of really difficult decisions to make.

And yeah, we're enjoying hearing all the different ways that people are sort of thinking, thinking through these things and also learning about what these systems and investments are meaning to their community. And learning like how AI is, is built. It doesn't come from nowhere. It does come from these physical infrastructures, so.

Tyler McBrien: I wonder if it's a good time to bring in the Three Mile Island trip. If you could just set that up for us, talk about why you went there as part of this, you know, broader research on digital infrastructures and their impacts on, on these communities.

And, and, you know, if, if you could also bring in some of the, I think our listeners will know a lot of the discourse around environmental impacts of, of AI and data centers in terms of water and energy use. But if you could also just frame it in terms of what you saw in, in Three Mile Island.

Livia Garofalo: So Three Mile Island. So the way we've done these road trips is really going from eastern to western Pennsylvania, mostly along I-76. So we're following kind of this highway as method and also river as method. So Three Mile Island is an really a little tiny island along the Susquehanna River right outside Pittsburgh, in Londonderry Township.

And I'm sure most of your listeners know, Three Mile Island signifies sort of in the history of nuclear accident. It was the first, and then in 1979 one of the, the first big nuclear accident on U.S. soil, and affected all of the US nuclear policy really in the decades following that.

So it's it has come back in the news because it's being restarted–not the reactor that had the issue, but the other reactor is being restarted–thanks to a partnership between Microsoft and Constellation Energy that now operates the plant to power Microsoft data centers. So the data centers aren't present in Three Mile Island or around that community, but the restarting of Three Mile Island kind of has elicited a lot of mixed reactions. And we were there. We've been there twice.

Actually Joan Joan's uncle helped us on the ground. He lives in Harrisburg, so there's a kind of a personal connection there. In this, actually in this diner, we went to this diner called Guppies. That was where all the journalists in the seventies came to report on the crisis. And now it's a place where you know, that diner itself has had to cut down hours. A steel mill close by has cut a lot of jobs. And so as we were talking to some of the, the folks there, they were like, you know, it's, it's, again, it's the trade off. It's, and especially when it comes to employment.

Your other question about sort of environmental impacts, right? We, we know sort of the adage about 10 queries of ChatGPT consumes half a liter of water. It's different when you actually see the river that is being impacted. So the Susquehanna River is a hugely important river, and it's a river that has been part of the history of extraction of Pennsylvania for more than a century.

So there's it's not just the nuclear plant, it's, there's a electrical plant. Sort of so it's important, I think even in these discussions about data centers, ecological impact to really have a placed based approach to how these things are being felt ecologically in a specific landscape that's already been really extracted upon. But I'm sure Maia and Joan can can talk about TMI, but that, that is really a, it's quite impressive to stand in front of those stacks I have to say.

Tyler McBrien: Yeah. Maia, I wanna kick it back to you or and Joan as well if you have something to add here. And I wanna bring in this quote from someone named Eric Epstein, who you met and discussed.

He, I believe he's, he leads a, a nonprofit named Three Mile Island Alert. But the, this, this quote, which I think really drives it home, is he said, it's amazing how many major environmental landmarks happen here and then how many major catastrophes occur. So Maia, I'm, I'm just curious your, your thoughts on, you know, meeting Eric and then if, if you wanted to, to add anything to, to what Livia was saying.

Maia Woluchem: Yeah. Eric is the best, you know, I, he just, he is, he is, he is been so active both in creating the public understanding of what Three Mile Island has meant to Londonderry Township, but also is, has been in so many parts of the sort of organizing and policymaking apparatus across. The city, the township, the county. He just knows everything and everyone.

And yeah, it, that, that trip in particular was a really salient one in so many ways because you know what we heard from Eric and we heard from other folks, this is on our second trip through the state, was that the, somebody else had, had had spoken about the fact that Pennsylvania is full of like every generation's trash.

Like they have every version of a fracking well, a hydropower plant that's no longer active, a coal plant that we haven't yet torn up, but still is like eating up the ground beneath it. Like there's just so much infrastructure that represents so many attempts to start and restart and start again. And as a result, it's true that this like beautiful ecological landscape that Livia touched on early on in this conversation has just been mined within every inch of its life for all of the sort of visions of what this future could be.

And the thing that's particularly tricky about the Three Mile Island example and many of the others is that, you know as part of this big AI race, as many have been calling it, there is an incredible push for speed. Like the speed is, is far outweighing any of the other important parts of what a sort of robust energy picture might look like. They might include things like, you know, environmental impact, community impact. How are we gonna zone effectively to make sure folks aren't harmed as a part of this?

Instead of doing all of those things we're just pushing towards deregulation in so many ways that makes it much harder for folks to not only just understand what the harms might be, but also protect against the things that we already know are true.

When Three Mile Island, the accident first happened a generation ago, one of the things that's been hard for us as researchers to parse out is that many of the narratives and much of the research at the time at in many ways are competing. You know, the, the federal picture might say, well, actually the radiation that was released into the water, the air, the ground, was really limiting. And at the same time, you might hear stories from folks who are on the ground who might say, well, my kids had nosebleeds for many, many weeks on end. We have, you know, cancer that's been running in our family. We have all of these stories that are sort of counter narratives.

And so I think one of the things that's been really important about somebody like Eric, who's holding so many roles and, and really able to tell this story in a very nuanced way, is that it provides enough room for us to like really take in a, a much more full and nuanced picture of both these jobs arguments, the environmental questions, the health questions, all of those things. And also try as best we can to cast out a future for what we anticipate will happen with both a push for AI and also the speed and sort of bombasticness with which of these projects are just showing up across the state.

Tyler McBrien: I mean to, to bring in another amazing Eric quote. He said, quote, we're fighting an AI war against China and it's being fought in Pennsylvania. Which I think also brings in, it's not only a narrative of, you know, Rust Belt renewal or something that is, can be very compelling, I'm sure, and, and it has like a hopeful tone. There's also now this narrative at play of this almost like patriotic duty to, you know, help fight the AI race against China, namely.

I guess, Joan, we can go to you or, or anyone else, what people on the ground who you spoke to, your fellow Pennsylvanians what they make of that narrative, if that's something that's motivating people and how it gels with reality again.

Joan Mukogosi: Yeah, that narrative was so prominent in the AI Energy Summit that happened at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh that gathered the president and investors and lawmakers all just, yeah, doing this like, like wartime sort of, called to, called to arms and sort of promising that Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania would be this sort of like center of this, of America's race against China. And I think that narrative is really strong from, from that end.

But in our conversations with folks on the ground, I don't think that it is really being received in that way. Again, I think what we've heard is more of those considerations about, you know, jobs and local investment rather than, you know, having a, a, a place in history when it comes to this battle against China. And I think that disconnect, again, just like really speaks to this break from sort of what these major companies, the federal government and state government are sort of putting into these projects. And then how communities are wrestling with the sort of like, top down mandates.

And so, yeah, I, I don't, you know, know if it's very compelling to see oneself as a soldier in the AI race. Because what does that really mean for your day-to-day life? Does that mean that you're electricity bill is gonna go up, and that's what you're delivering to the cause, or that your water is gonna be undrinkable? And so, yeah, I, I think that that narrative is really strong from that federal and investment perspective, but on the ground it seems much more complicated .

Tyler McBrien: Whether or not these narratives are compelling. On the one hand, this renewal narrative and another hand the nationalist AI race narrative are both in service, of course, of something we talked about earlier, which is pushing through deregulation which will, you know, help us win the race, et cetera.

So I wanna drill down a, a bit more on, on that, you know, what are we talking about in terms of deregulation? What do we know from the AI action plan that the administration has put forward, the I believe three executive orders related to ai industry development? What does it mean concretely when we do deregulate aspects of this industry in terms of permitting or labor or environment, environmental regulations? Livia, what, what have you seen and, and what have, what does your work have to say about this?

Livia Garofalo: Yeah, I'll kick it to Maia, I think for that question because she has sort of looked at the AI Action Plan. But another thing that I wanted to add is also jumping off what Joan was saying is that people are also in this, right?

They're seeing, for example, zoning is one of the big. It's really being fought at a very small, small level. So it's your town, it's your county being talking about those sort of concessions and being put in this, you know, do you want the prison or the data center situation. Nut also kind of the cognitive dissonance of having that and the electrical oil, and also AI being pushed in every facet of your life just as a person whether you live in Pennsylvania or not, right?

So there's this kind of selling point that it's like, well, what are you gonna do not have the AI companion on your, you know, Microsoft copilot. So I think that's something important to put into this mix is not only the kind of narratives about Pennsylvania as a place of opportunity, but also AI as an inevitable tool for the future. So, but I'll kick it to Maia for the AI action plan.

Tyler McBrien: Yeah, I mean, one thing that's really struck me about your work is that the, the most tangible aspect of this new AI industry, the infrastructure itself is, I feel like the, the aspect that's spoken about the least it's all about, you know, integration into our tools and, and, you know, adoption and the front end of the product, if you wanna call it that.

So I'm just putting it out there as, as food for thought. I, I, I don't know if that's, you know, actually true or not, but that's just the impression that I've gotten and, and one of the reasons why I was so interested to read about these trips. But Maia, I'll, I'll let you jump back in if you wanted to talk about the deregulation aspect or, or any of this.

Maia Woluchem: Yeah, the, just the environment, I'm just, I find very troubling because I think in the, in an absence of regulation, it provides a real opportunity, not just for the big companies that we're aware of the Google Meta, Amazons, but also many of the other grifters who are part of this ecosystem to sort of step in and make a, a claim towards statecraft and, and in a really kind of serious way.

So I think just to touch briefly on the pieces that are troubling to me in terms of the AI action plan. I think because we framed this as a race, we have used the power of the federal government to clear the way for other things that might get in the way of a race. So, as an example, there is a piece in the AI action plan that is, I, I can't remember what the language is at the time, but essentially trying to create to make it very, very difficult for states and localities to do any sort of real regulation around the environmental impacts is the land use, like the pieces that could get in the way of setting up this kind of infrastructure.

Which is very challenging because in the absence of a federal government that's open to that kind of, even just like policymaking around these kinds of big, now industrial powers, you might find that a state and locality would otherwise step in to do some of that work that might slow down some of this, some of this investment. Which is making it really hard, frankly, for states and localities to not only be able to sort of, sort through all of the mess of these narratives, but also put meaningful action down on paper.

In the state of Pennsylvania, we have been really we are really lucky to have incredible organizations of all kinds that have been working collectively to try to kick up a range of strategies and other sorts of things to slow down some of this work. But it has to be like quite piecemeal because it's very, very hard for, let's say like a, a town outside of Scranton on its own to combat a company with $20 billion putting down roots there, which is, you know, the case of Amazon as an example. Yeah, it's really, it's quite tricky. I'm trying to remember what your question was exactly about the pieces within

Tyler McBrien: Yeah, I can put it this way. I mean, I, you know, you mentioned a lot of states and localities are, are doing what they can to push back or slow down. So from, from that perspective, have there been any big wins in Pennsylvania or elsewhere, or medium wins or small wins? You said, you know, it could be quite piecemeal. But, yeah, are any communities, states, localities getting traction with, you know, trying to regulate or, or pushback against this march?

Maia Woluchem: Yeah, there, there have been a few actually, in some of the southern states have been some like really tremendous community wins that have, you know, stopped, let's say I, I'm trying to think of the exact example, but some of the things that, just to, to throw some things that we've seen in conversation in Pennsylvania.

You might see a regulation come through about fair use as an example that might say, you know, an industrial zone can only have a building that's of X amount of size knowing that a hyperscaler data center would be outside of that range. You might see something about water use or sort of the ways that we're organizing who and how those resources are spread across a community that might just make it trickier for something like a hyperscaler data data center to land in place.

Though I think we're up against some quite difficult wins in a state like PA. One of our sites is a former Alcoa plant in western Pennsylvania that, you know, it is actually co-located right alongside some active fracking wells and, you know, really abundant water resources. And I think that's one of the things that's, that, that makes trying to track some of these things really difficult because there are many, many sites that because they've been, you know, in industrial use for some time already have a fair amount of resources, just really centrally located to make something like this, it’s just harder to stop.

And I think, you know, one other aspect that has been true, not just for Pennsylvania but across the country, is that many of these deals happen under the cover, I won't say under the cover of night, but like, you know, in, in many sort of insidious ways, they may not name who, which company is coming into a town. You might not find out that there's a deal happening until it's like 10 minutes before the public hearing that happens, you know, 6:30 past or in the middle of the day when everybody's at work.

And so I actually think some of the serious work for so many groups are on the ground is just providing daylight, providing the data that we need to understand what's happening. Even getting a sense of, you know, which companies are active, how many data centers do we have, what deals are in motion right now. All of that stuff is really, really it's, it's growing increasingly harder to track, especially with this kind of, you know, kind of advanced protections for many of the private industries that are really active right now. And that just makes it really, it makes it quite tricky.

Tyler McBrien: One of the, perhaps most visible manifestations of, of these efforts that, that I've seen to push for more transparency or to ensure that whatever benefits do come from building data centers and AI industry are distributed throughout the communities in which they're situated is the people's AI Action Plan.

If you could just briefly describe, you know, the history of it, how it came about, and you know, what, it's obviously in reaction to the AI Action Plan. So what points it was conceived of to, to react to and, and kind of what it, what it calls for.

Maia Woluchem: As an institution, I think we really should shout out our colleagues at the AI Now Institute who did an amazing job really spearheading this effort on behalf of so many civil society actors that really helped orchestrate find language for and put this plan in motion.

My understanding of this effort is that it a collective effort of so many organizations that have been working on so many pieces of trying to understand, you know, the AI picture, the, the, I mean, frankly for quite a long time, many of the groups that are featured here have been, you know, thinking about big data misinformation, social media, like so many different aspects of what tech and data and AI have been, have meant to our societal and political progress over the past generation.

And so there are many, many groups that had their hand on this, but we really have to thank the AI Now Institute for just moving us forward and very thoughtfully one day ahead of the AI Action Plan that Trump and the administration released.

Tyler McBrien: You know, you've already taken several trips so far. And maybe Livia, we can stick with you for this one. I'm curious where your team is going next. I, I think you mentioned geographically you may be moving in a certain direction, but where else are you looking to, to travel to and, and how are you conceiving of these next few trips that you're on?

Livia Garofalo: Yeah, so we, our plan is sort of to have one site in eastern Pennsylvania, Three Mile Island will, and sort of that Londonderry Township remains one of our sort of key sites of inquiry and then Pittsburgh and sort of the Alcoa as a, this Alcoa plant that is being that sort of decommissioned and sort of plans for the for a new data center to come.

So we wanted to focus on these three parts of the state, but also on projects that are in different stages of development. So the Alcoa sort of node is again an instance in which the hype might be more advanced than the actual plans. I mean, it's still something under discussion. And so we're curious to see how those negotiations happen on the ground even though the press has sort of blasted this as a done deal.

Three Mile Island is a done deal both with Microsoft and, and Meta. So that's an interesting to see where that is in the life course. Three Mile land will reopen, not immediately, but those contracts are sealed. And then in eastern Pennsylvania, we're looking at possibly a, the site that Maia was mentioning around Scranton and sort of the plans for an Amazon data center.

And again, I, I can speak for myself, I'm an anthropologist, so this idea, we want to keep returning to places because we want people to sort of, to see people multiple times and have us get to know them and trust us. Because there's so many there's so much extraction happening out from their communities. So we don't wanna be the nth kind of journalist. Not journalist, but not to give, but you know, that kind of reporting that never comes back. And sort of, that's sort of part of our approach is to come back and also give something back, right.

And so further along the project kind of hosts some town halls events and public libraries also, because people sometimes don't understand what AI is. So also giving some some of our colleagues at Data and Society are developing this curriculum called AI 101 that really breaks down things in a very kind of simple but nuanced way.

Data and Society has also partnered with the New York Public Library for some AI public event. So I think the question for us is not only what we can understand about these transformations in Pennsylvania, but also how can we meaningfully engage with some of the organizing that's happening there, which, you know, pre-exists us for sure.

Tyler McBrien: I would go out on a limb and say even, even some of the most powerful people making decisions about the future of AI in America, in the world, don't quite understand AI either. But Joan, I would love to hear from you as well, what you're looking forward to in the project. What line of inquiry you're interested in and yeah, what, what's, what's next for you?

Joan Mukogosi: I actually just left the team. So I'm no longer gonna be a member of this team doing this project, but I will say I'm really excited to see the insights that come from speaking with community members who are so, just so often left out of these conversations around what's happening and what the impacts are. And I really just can't wait for the stories and the writing and yeah, what you all produce.

Livia Garofalo: There's a, this network of statewide data center, a sort of organizing and activism that we are, and actually Maia maybe can speak to that, but that is really exciting and we hope to collaborate with those folks more.

Maia Woluchem: Yeah, I think it's the thing that I'm most excited about and Joan's being very humble also. She left the team to pursue her PhD overall. So I think this, I, I mean, if anything, we are also just so excited too.

I, I think I, the thing that excites me is that this really was such a labor of like collective spirit and collective inquiry because each of us, I think, are coming from so many different perspectives. As Livia mentioned, she's an anthropologist, I'm an urban planner by training. It's been a really interesting trip to look out the window and see sort of three different visions of what's happening here, but also, you know, be able to build something that's felt this rich and deeply held.

But also say the thing that I am most excited for. I think, gosh, it's just, it's, there's a lot going on there all the time. The first time that we left and went on the road was the week after the election, the presidential election. And it was such an eye-opening experience because I think there's a world in which, you know, we could have been in our respective homes and trying to kind of understand the change that we would be seeing as a nation.

It was really actually incredible in many ways to be on the road instead, and, and really talking to people about what they thought was coming. And I think the thing that I'm most excited about is, is really watching those communities and, and engaging with, with folks in a really deep way.

As we see the incredible amount of change come by so quickly. It has only been, we're coming upon a year from our first trip, and I think many of the things that are coming down. I mean, this timeline is just, you know, highly accelerationist and so I think we're just gonna see a lot and I, I feel really grateful to be sort of challenged to step into that kind of nuance and like depth of experience in a in a real way and, and alongside folks that are really trying to make something so compelling out of the stuff that we are walking through right now.

As Livia mentioned, we have this amazing, and Pennsylvania, like many other states actually have, have incredible statewide organizing happening to, to really get a sense of what is, both what is the information about what's happening on the ground and how, from our various perspectives, whether it's, you know, because we care about our health or we care about the environment, or we care about, you know, taxes, or we care about a whole range of things.

Like how can we be building networks of, and really robust organizing networks, support networks, mutual aid, like all of the stuff that gets us through this time. It's been so rich and there's been so many different attempts to address this problem in a meaningful and really community driven way.

Tyler McBrien: Yeah. And, and as we close here and apologies if this is a very difficult question, I would love to hear from each of you, you know, if, if there's one conversation that you had, one person you met so far from these trips, one, I don't know, diner or something, or that, that really like, embodies, you know, what you've been learning or just has really stuck with you in a visceral way.

Yeah, I think it might be a nice way to close to just leave the listeners with, with one thing that's really, grabbed you from from these trips so far.

Joan Mukogosi: Well this isn't a person I met. I met him when I was born, but my Uncle Johnny as Livia mentioned earlier, took us around the Harrisburg, Three Mile Island area and since, you know, we went on that trip and met, met him there.

He's been doing his own research about the developments around TMI and I think that work and also the work of organizers that we met in Pittsburgh and folks across the state who are spending so much time learning about what's happening in their communities. And again, like just trying to make sense of these kind of complicated infrastructures and technologies, that to me, has stuck with me because, you know, it's important work and, you know, we, we, it's our job to do that.

But these folks are really sort of invested in what's happening in their communities. And I, you know, going back to what we're excited for, I am really hopeful that our work can contribute to making these infrastructures more visible and understandable for those folks and help contribute to that effort of trying to understand how their communities might change. So yeah, shout out to my Uncle Johnny.

Tyler McBrien: Livia, did you wanna go next?

Livia Garofalo: Sure. So in our first trip we met Don Young, who was a foreman at Bethlehem Steel for 50 years. He is in his eighties and he gave us a tour of the National Museum of Industry in Bethlehem, which shout out to that museum. It's incredible. And it's not only a history, history museum about Bethlehem and Steel, but really of why the steel industry was born in the Lehigh Valley also.

Walking with him through the steel, the steel stacks and sort of. Listening to his ambivalence right about and pride about his, his life in, in steel and also, you know, kind of the history of the 20th century and how we are in a different century with different actors and different priorities and just seeing his hands and what they had done and built for America. I mean, that was sort of a source of his pride.

And this was right after the election and he was really, really sad and really heartbroken as as we were, as we were. But it was a, an honor truly to meet him and have him speak with us,

Tyler McBrien: Maia.

Maia Woluchem: Oh, those are two really great ones folks. I am going to shout out the archivists at the Heinz History Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who are tremendous scholars. They are doing an amazing, amazing job of holding onto so much of, I mean, truly like so much history of this country in so many ways.

We went there with only questions, and we had no idea what we were gonna find. And we ended up having such a rich and beautiful conversation with I think four or five of the librarians at, at that archive who have spent their whole careers maintaining very, very rich storytelling about this very cyclical nature of industrial history in this country.

And tell a story that is both about, like, as you mentioned, this very like complicated gilded age sort of story and also this meaningful trauma that you experience when you live in a place that is booming, but the sky is black because of the coal. Or you, you know, lived in a place that made like every glass bottle and then suddenly the factory is closed and now nobody can leave and nobody can envision sort of what happens on the other side of that.

And so I, I really, really appreciate I think just the art and the craft of what they have been doing for so long and the storytelling that they do that just celebrates in so many ways, sort of the complexity of I mean, really any place. You know, if it's Pennsylvania is a very, I think I love it 'cause it's just, it's, it's every story that you could want in a place. And I, it's, I thank them so much for doing that work with incredible care and real celebration for all the things that we could all be, it's a beautiful thing to see.

Tyler McBrien: Well, Maia, Joan, and Livia, thanks so much for, for taking the time to share all of these stories from the road, all the shout outs to the people that you met. And yeah, I really look forward to, to following your journey on your next trips and, and I, yeah, I really appreciate the conversation. Thank you.

Livia Garofalo: Thank you so much.

Maia Woluchem: Thank you so much, Tyler.

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