Reasonably Optimistic AI is coming. Is there enough power to run it?
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Feb 25, 2026 
Jake Auchincloss, U.S. Representative focused on tech and energy, joins to discuss AI’s infrastructure needs. He describes evolving views on AI and the energy, permitting, and grid challenges of scaling data centers. He outlines policy fixes like geothermal, permitting reform, and targeted AI rules. The conversation touches on jobs, platform liability, and balancing growth with community benefits.
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AI As A General Purpose Economic Force
- AI is a general-purpose technology poised to reshape the economy like electricity or the steam engine.
- Jake Auchincloss compares AI's broad impact to past tech waves and rejects both utopian and apocalyptic extremes as bad takes.
Jobs Shift Not Vanish With AI
- Historical patterns show technology creates new jobs rather than a fixed pool of work being destroyed.
- Auchincloss cites shortages in radiologists and AI coders as evidence there is no current labor-market collapse.
Use Policy To Share AI Gains
- Design policy to narrow the growing gap between returns to capital and returns to labor.
- Auchincloss urges intentional policy so AI creates dignified, higher-wage jobs instead of concentrating wealth.