With artificial intelligence issues -- and, specifically, the question of data centers -- set to be a top issue this election season and beyond, lawmakers in Bismarck have created a committee (not, specifically, a task force) to gather information and establish facts.

Why a committee and not a task force? "We want it to be an official committee so it can all be on public record," Rep. Jonathan Warrey, who is chairing the committee, said on this episode of Plain Talk. "We can have public input and it becomes part of the legislative record in organizational session going into the next session."

Warrey said that was an important first step given the amount of mistrust and conspiracy mongering around this issue. The goal of the committee is to cut through the noise of public opinion and get to facts.

"Many people have passion or they've been impacted deeply by something," he said, "and I want to respect their opinion, but we have a job to do, and we really want it filtered through a lens of what are your credentials? What are your sources?"

"I want to make sure that anybody presenting information can source it and they've got some credential with it, too," he continued.

Warrey, a Republican from District 22, said that one thing he, personally, isn't ready to accept is a moratorium on data center development that Democratic-NPL candidates like Vern Thompson and Trygve Hammer (along with a horseshoe coalition of far-right populists) have been calling for.

"I don't like moratoriums and I don't like the symbol they send off to say 'nope we we dug our heels in we're not developing we're closed for business," he said. "And yet I appreciate and respect the feeling behind that too much too fast. Let's go to work and get this framework out for our decision makers and give them some resources around legal environmental structural power so that they can be informed."

To achieve that goal, Warrey says he'd like this committee to produce a "playbook" to help local elected leaders understand the legal and regulatory issues around data centers. "So many of our township officers, our county commissioners, our city council members, they're not experienced with this," he said.

"Developing a playbook to help our communities would be paramount, I think."

Also on this episode, co-host Chad Oban and I talk about how artificial intelligence has made it so that there are no experts any more, because everybody is an expert. People with actual expertise are now drowned out by online mobs who can generate massive amounts of content in support of their ill-informed opinions and amplify it through social media. Also, with the 4th of July, and America's 250th birthday upon us, we talk about why patriotism shouldn't be partisan.

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