'Congress is way behind where it should be in understanding the nature of this revolution and its impacts': New bill from Bernie Sanders and AOC wants to try and pause US data center construction
Bernie Sanders is warning AI could destroy humans, or worse still, the planetThis moratorium would prevent any future data center buildouts or expansionsMost tech leaders have warned of job losses or other impacts
US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) (D-NY) have shared details of the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act (2026), which argues data center construction across the country should be paused for both new sites and upgrades.
The purpose of the bill is to allow the US government oversight of AI to catch up by slowing down development, preventing Big Tech from influencing society, the economy or democracy.
Sanders and AOC worry mass AI rollouts have already led to job losses, citing plenty of other concerns, thus the pause on data centers would allow the US to regulate the technology more carefully before it gets out of hand.
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Bernie Sanders wants to slow down data centers to protect US citizens
AI has already been linked to layoffs, with the two warning of mass unemployment, but they also cite concerns over surveillance and mass monitoring, deepfakes, misinformation and the environment impacts associated with high water and electricity usage.
A summary notice details how many of the world's richest and/or most influential people have already acknowledged some of the above concerns, including Microsoft's Bill Gates, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Tesla's Elon Musk, Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, Microsoft AI's Mustafa Suleyman, Ford's Jim Farley, Oracle's Larry Ellison and more.
The moratorium would both ban new AI data center construction and upgrades to existing facilities, until certain conditions are met which would lift the ban. Those conditions focus on privacy, civil rights, the economy, the environment and communities.
"This bill will stop a global race to see which country is the first to eliminate hundreds of millions of jobs, or the first to build an AI that destroys the planet," the two summarize.
