AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in Denver for the theatrical release of Steal This Story, Please!, and Juan González is in Chicago.

We end today’s show looking at recent news on the fight over regulating artificial intelligence and the growing community resistance to AI data centers. On Thursday, President Trump abruptly canceled a scheduled ceremony where he was expected to sign a new executive order on AI regulations. Several top tech executives, including Elon Musk, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and David Sacks reportedly warned Trump about the regulations.

Meanwhile, Meta has sent layoff notices to about 8,000 workers, or about 10% of the social media giant’s workforce, as the company pivots to AI. This comes as Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged in an all-hands meeting to workers that Meta is training AI data on its own workforce.

In other AI news, a federal jury in California Monday rejected Elon Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman. The jury ruled Musk waited too long to sue over the matter.

To talk about this and more, we’re joined by Karen Hao, author of the award-winning book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. It’s now out in paperback. She’s just helped launch The AI Resist List to document acts of resistance to the AI industry across the world.

Karen, thanks so much for joining us from London. Though we only have a few minutes, if you could start off by talking about, looking back across the pond to the United States, what happened yesterday? There was going to be an executive order on AI restrictions, and then, apparently, in consultation with Musk and Sacks, two of the PayPal Mafia, and Zuckerberg, Trump canceled the executive order signing.

KAREN HAO: Hi, Amy. Thanks so much for having me.

I mean, I think this is a perfect illustration of what we — the moment that we’re in right now, where these really powerful tech billionaires have fused with the state and are trying to override what the people actually want. Eighty percent of Americans, in the latest polling, are concerned about AI. They support AI regulation. And because of the pressure that they’ve been applying to elected officials, there was actually, in fact, potentially going to be some momentum on that at the federal front. And, of course, now there’s this setback because the tech billionaires stopped it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you, in terms of the massive movement that’s developed in the country, especially against data centers, that cuts across all political — all political views. You’re seeing Americans turning out by the hundreds and thousands in local city council and county meetings opposing these data centers. Could you talk about that movement, and as part of this resistance?

KAREN HAO: This has been one of the most remarkable stories in the last year. In 2025, these data center protests successfully stalled over $100 billion worth of these facilities. I think part of the reason why so many communities are mobilizing — and it really does cut across political lines, as you mentioned — is because this is a manifestation of the thing that — at the heart of what so many Americans are angry about right now, which is that there’s this huge chasm in American society, where there are these — you know, we’re minting the first trillionaire in the world, while simultaneously so many Americans are just trying to afford their basic life and trying to put food on the table for their kids. And in come these data centers. They’re a physical manifestation of this, because they consume an enormous amount of energy, they consume freshwater resources, they are hiking up people’s utility prices and exacerbating that affordability crisis, all in the name of producing a technology that is concentrating yet more wealth in the hands of those very same billionaires.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of companies doing massive layoffs in the tech industry, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order calling on state agencies to explore ways to protect and prepare workers for the AI-related job losses. Your reaction?

KAREN HAO: One of the things that I think people misunderstand about these layoffs is they think that it indicates somehow AI is successfully replacing all of these workers. But what’s important to understand is, these tech companies, they’re trying to get cost efficiencies now, in part because they’re spending an extraordinary amount of money trying to develop AI technologies. And they’re actually making a future bet that when they lay off the current human employees to gain current cost efficiencies, that they will hopefully then be able to automate them away later with AI. But it’s not, in fact, a representation of what AI can currently do.

But there are plenty of other sectors outside of the AI industry that are now doing the same thing. They’re also trying to make this future bet that they will be able to automate workers. And so, that is what’s actually having this cascading effect on the job market, where AI is being used as a justification to accelerate layoffs.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you, finally, Karen Hao, in this last 30 seconds, talk more about The AI Resist List?

KAREN HAO: This is a project that I did with a group of journalists, critical scholars and AI researchers documenting resistance movements around the world. It is meant to center hope. It is meant to center action. And it shows all the different creative ways that anyone can actually participate in applying pressure to the AI industry, holding it accountable, and, in fact, shaping the trajectory of this technology.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us. Karen Hao is the author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, now out in paperback. We will link to The AI Resist List.

A very happy birthday to Mike Di Filippo, and a happy belated birthday to Buffy Hernandez! We thank you so much, all, for being with us. I’m in Denver, will be — there’ll be a screening of the film Steal This Story, Please! at the Sie Center cinema in Denver, and it is also at the Dairy in Boulder all through this weekend. The big fundraiser for KGNU is Saturday at 4:30, with the film at 6:30. Check out democracynow.org and go to KGNU.org. Then I’ll be in Albuquerque at the Guild Cinema, where the film opens this weekend. And you can check that out at StealThisStory.org. I’m Amy Goodman in Denver, with Juan González in Chicago. Thanks so much for joining us.