Sign-on: NC Data Center Network Response to NC AI Leadership Council’s Strategic Roadmap deadline Friday, July 24

The NC Data Center Network has issued a response to the Governor’s AI Leadership Council’s Strategic Roadmap. This roadmap was created with only one person representing workers (Hannah Drummond, a nurse at Mission Hospital and member of their union, National Nurses United). She was the lone vote against the goals laid out in this roadmap.

In short, this roadmap seeks to integrate AI into key government services, education, and to “re-skill workers”, while also shoring up things like unemployment insurance and unemployment benefits from NC. They acknowledge that people will lose their jobs, they need to prepare for it, but have no plans to push back to protect people’s jobs. There is no plan to protect the communities targeted for data centers (or the pipelines & powerplants to power them) in it, no plan to lower our electric bills, or protect our water, etc. When we asked that environmental justice communities be included on this leadership council, we were told that our place was on the Energy Policy Taskforce (whose seats were all full, so no EJ communities were included on that either).

If your organization would like to sign onto our proposed response letter, you can read it at this link. Our goal is to get as many groups who want to sign on as we can before this Friday, July 24, when NNU will lead a press conference in Raleigh, sharing their response to the roadmap. NCEJN’s Board Member Dr. Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway will speak on the environmental justice issues.

Download the Letter here and Click here to sign onto the letter

– Steph Gans (CWFNC) for The NC Data Center Network