Some of the concerns from communities about the adverse impact of data centers on their communities are valid and need to be addressed by local leaders. Other concerns about data centers are proxies for larger debates about the role of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as retrospective and prospective battles about the place of technology in our daily lives. Regardless, AI is thankfully here to stay, and data centers are needed to power this empowering technology.

Michael Marinaccio’s recent essay in The Hedgehog Review, “Plato’s Warning Has Been Vindicated,” is a serious and thoughtful contribution to the debate over artificial intelligence. Marinaccio deserves credit for engaging the subject in a sober, philosophically informed way rather than treating AI as either a technological messiah or an existential monster. We need more analysis like this. Artificial intelligence is developing quickly enough, and touching enough parts of human life, that questions about knowledge, memory, language, judgment, and human flourishing deserve much more attention than they usually receive.

We are sliding into the waning days of the 119th Congress, with only around 30 days left in the legislative calendar for the House of Representatives and about 40 days left for the Senate before the election. This therefore seems as good a time as any to recall why it is that having a national framework for AI regulation is so important. Our Constitution grants Congress the unique right (and, we would argue, sometimes even the responsibility) to regulate interstate commerce.