Politico

A Midwest tech hub that’s also one of America’s bluest cities is moving to rein in the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure boom, underscoring a growing divide over how fast the U.S. should build out data centers. City council members in Madison (WI) home to the state’s capitol and nearly 300,000 people, voted unanimously to temporarily ban new construction of large data centers for one year.

As Venezuela and Iran grapple with immense political tumult, Starlink has become a lifeline for internet access. Iranian activists have disseminated images of troops suppressing protestors by connecting to Starlink, while Venezuelans are relying on the service to get information on President Nicolás Maduro’s removal.

The Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown has been meticulously documented through smartphones—most recently, in the anonymous bystander videos of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shooting Renee Good in Minneapolis (MN). The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), under President Trump, has argued that recording and publishing images of its officers while on operations is a crime that threatens officials’ safety.

Sexualized deepfakes have led to some of the most trenchant criticism of generative artificial intelligence (AI) after affecting everyone from Taylor Swift to high school students.

If AI is as transformative an economic force as its greatest advocates (and detractors) believe it might be, then humans might need a new kind of economic policy to deal with it. Federal AI policy mostly involves incentivizing data center construction and keeping Washington out of the way. Even for many advocates, that misses a very large aspect of its potential impact.