Why Amazon Dropped Its OpenAI Video, Data Center Workers Fight Back, and Meta Leaks Employee Data

Leah Feiger: Yes. Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, launched it Data Center Moratorium Actwhich would delay the construction of new AI centers until there are real national defenses. This sounds, in many ways, like a lot of left-wing propaganda, but surprisingly, this is a lot. There are people from all over getting involved because their people are reaching out and going, “What are you doing in my name? What are you doing behind my back? How is this benefiting me? How is this hurting me?” So I think the thing I’m most surprised by is the duality of this.

Zoë Schiffer: It’s interesting because I feel like, and this is just my opinion, but based on how OpenAI talked about the data center, it came out in front on the first day of The Trump administrationsuccessful type of large data center design projects. I was like, I’m reading Chris Lehane, the company’s global CEO, a former high-flyer at Airbnb and a former political activist like this was something that he and OpenAI would have thought would be beneficial to the company. It was like America’s first arrest, baby, make a message.

Leah Feiger: We are providing services to everyone.

Zoë Schiffer: They just misread the moment. They didn’t realize how poisonous this story would be. And now it is very difficult to change their mind when they have been releasing publications every time there was a new data center. Now it’s like, “Uh-oh, we have to shut up because people don’t really like this.”

Brian Barrett: And for you, they can’t get it back any way until you can put the data in the space because they need to compute.

Zoë Schiffer: Which by the way, will be very difficult to do.

Brian Barrett: If not, impossible. Zoë, is there any chance that some kind of internal dissonance, right, electronics experts say, “I don’t think so.” Industry insiders say, “Hey, we don’t like data centers anymore.” Any chance that this will change anything in terms of how these buildings, these companies, spend money?

Zoë Schiffer: I would be very surprised. I don’t want to say no because we’ve seen examples where Googlers got together, pushed back on Project Maven, some of the research that’s been done in China and what have you, and it stopped.

Brian Barrett: Very quickly, Project Maven was actually working with the Pentagon, right, using Google Tech for the DoD?

Zoë Schiffer: Exactly, exactly. So yes, it happened before. It can happen again. All I can say is two things. First, the pushback we’ve seen from hourly workers has been less when you look at all workers. They are bringing thousands of people. I have heard that they are paying more than what people earn in these jobs. And so I think for the companies that historically wanted a lot of jobs, I think there will be people who are ready to work on these jobs and then we will hear small pockets of opposition and pushback, which again is a story, it is related, and not everyone, but I think they can hire thousands and thousands of people. I would also say that at the corporate level, where we are starting to see more pushback, more opposition from corporate workers in terms of what their companies are doing, it is still much lower than it was at the end of 2018.