What happens when artificial intelligence becomes less popular than Congress?

For our Season 4 capstone, we examine why public trust in AI is declining, particularly among younger Americans, and whether fears about job displacement and data centers are creating a wider political backlash.

Then we get into a deeper policy discussion.

We explore how AI should be regulated, from treating it as a public utility to requiring greater transparency, incident reporting, protections for children, and stronger oversight of chip exports. The conversation also turns to open-source AI, the rapid growth of Chinese models, and the difficult question of whether people should own and receive compensation for the data used to train AI systems.

Finally, we consider whether AI will become a defining issue in U.S. elections and discuss New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s approach to AI in government and schools.

Guests:

• Art Abal, Managing Director, Vana Foundation
• Sheila Warren, Board Chair, Advanced AI Society
• Justin Slaughter, VP of Regulatory Affairs, Paradigm

The People’s AI is presented by the Vana Foundation, supporting a new internet rooted in data sovereignty and user ownership, where individuals, not corporations, govern their own data and share the value it creates. Learn more at https://vana.org.

What does the AI boom look like when it becomes physical?

In this episode of The People’s AI, presented by the Vana Foundation, we explore the data centers, power grids, water systems, and compute networks behind today’s AI revolution. Every chatbot response, AI-generated video, coding agent, and model query has to run somewhere, and increasingly, that means massive data centers that require huge amounts of electricity, water, land, and local approval.

We look at why AI infrastructure has become one of the biggest questions in tech: whether the current data center buildout is a real shortage, a speculative bubble, or something in between. We examine local opposition to data centers, the strain on the power grid, rising energy costs, water use, and the challenge of measuring AI’s full environmental and social impact.

We also explore the history of computing efficiency through Moore’s Law and Koomey’s Law, and why the old assumption of getting more computing power “for free” may no longer hold. As AI demand grows, especially from agents and heavy inference workloads, the question becomes not just whether we need more compute, but how that compute should be built.

Finally, we examine decentralized compute as a possible part of the solution. Instead of concentrating AI infrastructure in a handful of giant data centers, could compute become more distributed, flexible, and closer to where unused resources and energy already exist?

Guests

• Greg Osuri — Founder and CEO, Akash Network
• Lee Rainie — Director, Imagining the Digital Future Institute, Elon University
• Andrew Chien — Professor of Computer Science, University of Chicago; Senior Scientist, Argonne National Laboratory
• Jonathan Koomey — Energy and computing researcher; President, Koomey Analytics

The People’s AI is presented by the Vana Foundation, supporting a new internet rooted in data sovereignty and user ownership, where individuals, not corporations, govern their own data and share the value it creates. Learn more at Vana.org.

What is your data actually worth, and who gets paid when it moves through the invisible economy?

In this episode of The People’s AI, presented by the Vana Foundation, we explore the hidden markets built on the data we generate every day. From geolocation signals and shopping behavior to credit histories and even the weight of restaurant garbage, we look at how ordinary activity becomes valuable information for hedge funds, advertisers, lenders, retailers, and now AI companies.

We trace the origins of modern data markets through the history of credit bureaus, then examine how today’s data broker economy works, why individual data may be worth only fractions of a cent on its own, and why it becomes enormously valuable at scale. We also ask the harder question underneath it all: who actually owns user data, legally and morally?

As AI companies search for more specialized, high-quality data, the stakes are changing. We explore why AI labs may increasingly need financial data, behavioral data, and user-permissioned datasets, and what that could mean for personal data monetization, data ownership, and the future of data portability.

We also examine alternative models, including user-created datasets, decentralized data markets, and data commons that could give individuals and communities more agency, attribution, and control over how their data is used.

Guests:

• James Coyle — Data Monetization Consultant
• Alex Johnson — Founder, Fintech Takes
• Stefaan Verhulst — Co-Founder, The GovLab at NYU

The People’s AI is presented by the Vana Foundation, supporting a new internet rooted in data sovereignty and user ownership, where individuals, not corporations, govern their own data and share the value it creates. Learn more at Vana.org.