71% of Americans oppose nearby data centers
A Gallup poll found 71% of Americans do not want a data center built anywhere near them.
Snapshot · This Week in Tech (Audio)
TWiT 1086: The Great Beagle Migration - Pope Leo XIV's 1st Encyclical & Ferrari's 1st EV
Explore episode
May 31, 2026
Where this was said
Pope Leo XIV's AI Encyclical: Magnifica Humanitas
At 25:10 · chapter starts 21:50
Leo Laporte pivots to what he considers one of the week's most intellectually interesting stories: Pope Leo XIV — who named himself after the Pope who wrote a landmark encyclical about the Industrial Revolution — has released Magnifica Humanitas, a 42,000-word document on AI. Gary Rivlin is enthusiastic: the Vatican has been sending delegations to Silicon Valley since the mid-2010s, meeting with Reid Hoffman, Google's James Manyika, and Microsoft's Kevin Scott, and the resulting document reflects genuine depth. [1] — Gary Rivlin "Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical is a surprisingly sophisticated AI policy document, built on years of Vatican engagement with Silicon Valle…" 41:30 Rivlin's summary of its core argument: AI is neither inherently good nor bad — the problem is who controls it, and a handful of tech elites in Silicon Valley and Beijing should not be making those decisions for all of humanity. Molly White adds what she finds most valuable: the Pope explicitly challenges the tech industry's 'AI is inevitable' framing, arguing that AI is a human technology that humans can choose how — or whether — to develop. The panel notes that the encyclical is pro-AI in the sense that it acknowledges AI's genuine benefits, while calling for guardrails, human oversight, and democratic accountability for its development.
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U.S. electricity prices have risen approximately 25% over the last four to five years, a period that coincides with rapid data center expansion.
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