Louisiana GOP Sen. John Kennedy, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” offered five pieces of advice to the AI industry to change the public’s mind on data centers: <\/p>\n
KRISTEN WELKER: All right. Let’s move to another issue that you raised, that Steve Kornacki was talking about at the top, of course, those data centers. You saw the Decision Desk poll numbers. Just to remind folks, 69% oppose building data centers in their community. President Trump said something interesting. He said communities that oppose data centers, quote, want to end up being backwards and poor. Backwards and poor, he said, Senator. Do you agree with President Trump? SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: No. I mean, look, the president can say what he wants. You know, he’s, he’s aggressively unpredictable. Here’s what I see. The people who have developed AI are very, very smart. But they’re high IQ stupid people. You might let them tutor you. But you wouldn’t want them to date your sister. They’re terrible marketers. Either that or they hired, I don’t know, the marketing director for Cracker Barrel. They started got – they started out by saying, We have this wonderful technology. And it’s going to cost everybody their job. And it costs a lot of money for electricity. And your bills might go up. And it uses a lot of water. But trust us, you’ll love it. Now, here’s what: AI and the data centers can get their momentum back. But they’re going to have to do a few things. First, they’re going to have to stop using so much water. Go to a closed-loop system. Number two, they’re going to have to provide their own energy. Number three, they’re going to have to devise buildings that are slightly aesthetic. I mean, the buildings they build now look like a, they look like a broken arm with the bone sticking out. Number four, they’re going to have to stop going into these states and demanding all these tax subsidies and, and, and demanding all the tax breaks. They’re all rich. Number five, they’re going to have to straight up – talk straight up to the American people about what AI means. The American people look at it. They’re not stupid. They get it. They think, Well, AI could make our lives better if it doesn’t take our jobs and kill us all first. These high-IQ stupid people have done a lousy job of explaining all that. They can get it back, but they’ve got work to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n