Jasmine Sun — Podcast Appearances & AI Summaries

“I think that a lot of the public backlash to AI that has risen over the past six months is not explained by people thinking that the technology has no use at all. It's not explained by them being worried about specific technical properties of LLMs... It's AI as sort of an avatar for a small group of Silicon Valley billionaires' ability to impose their vision of the world onto everybody else without their consent.”

— Jasmine Sun (27:04)

“My conversations made me wonder if the technical content of data center deals is mostly besides the point... Rather, the way that AI companies engage with communities, forcing NDAs, dangling billion-dollar promises... resembles a classic story about dark money and politics. It's not Skynet, it's the all of it.”

— Journalist Jasmine Sun

“It didn't feel like a trade-off... people were just like, 'but do we need it at all?'”

— Jasmine Sun, on why data center opposition is uniquely intense compared to other industrial projects.

“A gigantic company should not be able to sue us out of our democratically chosen decisions.”

— Jasmine Sun, on the power asymmetry in Selene, Michigan.

“I suspect there is a way to do the deals right. There is a way for places like Janesville... to find a way to get a good deal out of the AI companies.”

— Jasmine Sun, offering a nuanced, hopeful conclusion about the possibility of fair negotiations.

“So when you say, 'Hey, AI agent, go off and make me a million dollars,' whether that model goes and does so in a law-abiding and safe way, the safety of the model is very correlated with whether it is economically useful as well.”

— Jasmine Sun

“Reporting is taking tacit or private knowledge and turning it into public knowledge. That task is extremely robust in the era of AI.”

— Jasmine Sun