* Crain’s…

Gov. JB Pritzker expects the state Legislature will take up the issue of data center regulation during the veto session session later this year.

“In November, there’s going to be a session of the General Assembly, and in that session they’ll be considering the Power Act,” Pritzker said yesterday after an unrelated event in Monee. The veto session is scheduled Nov. 17-19 and Dec. 1-3. […]

The governor says a legislative working group has been meeting for months to come up with a proposal, though it’s not yet clear what will be included in the legislation. A wide-ranging bill introduced last spring covered everything from renewable power incentives and support for affordable energy programs, environmental regulations and community benefits requirements. […]

The bill Pritzker envisions “would require that these data centers bring with them, first of all, dollars to both invest in energy and the source of energy, hopefully clean energy, to power them. And of course, we want them to bring their own closed-loop water systems, so they’re not taking away from and increasing the cost of water for people who live in the area.

* Block Club Chicago…

[Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson] and several alderpeople introduced an ordinance to City Council on Wednesday that would pause the construction of any new data center for 12 months, as well as block the “material expansion” of existing ones.

Their goal is to give more time to a newly-created city task force dedicated to establishing a regulatory framework for data centers in Chicago, the Mayor’s Office said in a press release. Johnson created the task force in August via an executive order.

“Chicago is open for business, but we are not for sale. We welcome innovation, investment, and the jobs and opportunities that come with it, but growth must be done responsibly and in a way that protects the health, safety and quality of life of Chicago residents,” Johnson said in a statement.

* More from the governor’s press conference yesterday…

Reporter: I want to ask about data centers, another form of business development. The Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, earlier this week proposed a moratorium on new ones. Why haven’t we seen that statewide in Illinois?

Pritzker: Because we’re trying to get the POWER Act passed for the state, which would require that these data centers bring with them, first of all, dollars to both invest in energy and the source of energy, hopefully clean energy, to power them, but importantly to keep make sure that electric bills stay low or lower for people who live around those data centers and across the state of Illinois. And of course, we want them to bring their own closed-loop water systems so they’re not taking away from and increasing the cost of water for people who live in the area. And then finally, we want to make sure that people have their local say, there’s transparency about the deals that are being done, and that people have the ability to speak up if they don’t want a data center in their communities. That’s all built into the law that’s being crafted now. There have been working groups to try to work that out and make sure that we can make it happen. Most important of all, we shouldn’t have data centers unless they have all those features.

Reporter: Why not, in the meantime, though, issue some kind of an order saying no more permits? We saw Governor Abbott do something like that in Texas. I think people are kind of wondering whether…

Pritzker: We took away all the tax benefits, as you know, for these folks. And these are that means for a lot of them that they’ve got to either slow down or stop. What we want to make sure is when we get this law in place, we don’t want them to go away if we have this law in place and they’re bringing with them the electricity capacity that we hope that we’ll be able to mandate when they come to town.

Reporter: Do you see that the tax credit moratorium is having it both ways, trying to have it both ways at all, because I mean they can still be built?

Pritzker: Well, potentially—Listen, we don’t want them not to be built as long as they follow the rules of the POWER Act. And so we’ll see what happens in November, and there are obviously other things that we could consider doing, but I think right now, what we want to make sure we’re doing is requiring them to do the things that keep people safe in their communities and keep bills as low as they possibly can be.

* Center Square…

Gov. JB Pritzker signed an executive order earlier this week creating an Artificial Intelligence Cabinet for Illinois, which will advise the state’s policies on the technology. […]

State Rep. Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore, said he’s not certain recent concerns about the technology aren’t overblown, but he’d welcome the cabinet if there’s a strategic approach that won’t inhibit development.

“I welcome an Illinois AI Cabinet if its charge is that full picture – risk and readiness, safeguards and speed against those who do not share our values, accountability for harm and ambition for what this technology can still do,” Keicher said.

He said he feels the state’s role should be focused on reducing individual harms that could be caused by AI, like job loss or state security threats – which the cabinet is poised to address.

“The role of state government in that is to make sure that our individual citizens are protected with guardrails, but not to inhibit the upside that would come from AI being able to make everyone more productive and more successful in any line of work potentially,” Keicher said.

More…

* NYT | Chief Executive of Nvidia Jensen Huang Thinks A.I. Alarmism Has Gone Too Far: “Yeah. It’s kind of like, in order to save you, they’ve got to hurt you first — that’s the nature of surgery. They’ve got to cut you open to save you. They’ve got to inflict an enormous amount of pain and suffering on you so that they can save you. And so I think A.I.’s kind of like that. Over the next several years we have to unfortunately use fossil fuels, because we just don’t have enough sustainable energy to make a difference. And then after that, hopefully, we can transition to that.”

* Tribune | Gov. JB Pritzker turns to Illinois lawmakers to act on data center regulations: But even the Protecting Our Water, Energy, and Ratepayers Act doesn’t include an outright pause on data centers. Instead, the legislation would hold data centers responsible for energy costs and environmental protections. “We want to require them to bring their own power, bring their own water,” Pritzker said.

* Illinois Times | Sangamon County Board defends data center approval in court: However, no local sales tax will apply to any of the “‘minimum $500 million investment,’” since CyrusOne secured a tax break before Gov. JB Pritzker used executive authority to pause a state program providing deals to developers. “The proposed data center project would have minimal environmental impacts on surrounding land while generating substantial job opportunities and economic investment, as well as nearly $100 million in tax revenue,” the filing states. “Once construction is complete, the data center is expected to employ 100 permanent full-time employees on campus.”

* Pew Research Center | Americans’ views of data centers have turned more negative: More than half of Americans (54%) now say data centers are mostly bad for the environment, up from 39% in January. Half say they are mostly bad for home energy costs, up from 38%. And 49% say they are mostly bad for people’s quality of life nearby, up from 30%. The new survey was conducted from July 20 to Aug. 9 among 10,548 U.S. adults.

* Press release | Illinois-led coalition urges Congress to pass AI regulation: Attorney General Kwame Raoul, as part of a bipartisan coalition of 26 attorneys general, today called on Congress to immediately regulate the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. In their letter, Raoul and the coalition warn that reports of recent incidents demonstrate unchecked AI development endangers Americans and poses a potential threat to our financial system, critical infrastructure and national security. The coalition urges Congress to quickly pass substantive legislation to regulate the AI industry to ensure development occurs at an intentional pace, incorporates safety and transparency by design, and maintains states’ ability to oversee the industry.

* WMBD | Data center moratorium in Normal extended until May 2027: The measure would ban the construction of any data centers within the town of Normal until May of 2027. Originally, the moratorium was meant to expire in November of this year. Town staff said the reason for the extension is mainly to ensure they are following any regulations the General Assembly may put on the table.

* Evanston Roundtable | Initial zoning application filed for data center in West Evanston: A zoning analysis application for “determination of use for a computer processing center” was submitted to the city Sept. 16, records show. The application appeared on the Sept. 18 city manager’s report and is for a property in the Second Ward at 1265 Hartrey Ave. While the report did not provide further details, Planning Manager Liz Williams confirmed Monday night that the application is for what’s better known as a data center. These developments have faced intense opposition nationwide, causing dozens of projects worth billions of dollars to be stalled. “That is my basic understanding of what they are proposing,” Williams wrote in a text to the RoundTable. “It does sound like it will support adjacent innovation center uses though as opposed to just data processing.”

* AP | US diplomats told to say ‘super intelligence’ — not ‘artificial intelligence’ — after Trump’s call: On Tuesday, Trump told the U.N. General Assembly that he would “officially” change the name of AI, saying the existing name makes the technology seem “fake” and that U.S. government documents would from that point forward use “super intelligence.” “The use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake, it makes it sound fake and it is not fake. It’s actually amazing,” Trump said.

* Press release | Governor Newsom signs most comprehensive data center laws in the nation, providing communities more control on water, electricity, and land use: California is implementing stronger reporting requirements, giving communities more information about the water, electricity, and land use of proposed data centers. With these new laws, California is helping to ensure that communities have more information they need to decide whether data centers are right for them.

* NYT | Wall Street Is Growing Skeptical of the Data Center Boom: SB Energy, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank that has proposed to build the largest data center project in the world in Ohio, had originally planned its I.P.O. for this month. But the offering has been delayed, as investors question the company’s sought-after valuation of $50 billion or more, according to interviews with four people familiar with the deal’s marketing efforts. So far, bankers have struggled to find enough buyers of SB Energy stock within price ranges the company and its bankers had sought.

* STLPR | How data center noise is different from regular noise pollution, according to a St. Louis scientist: Fowler-Finn compares regular city noise to the rumble of a train passing by and data center noise to a child’s scream. “You can still hear that scream above the train because all of the sound is concentrated into a single frequency,” Fowler-Finn said. “And that’s why these data center hums tend to be so piercing and so evident is because they’re concentrated in single frequencies and they really stand out from background noise no matter how loud or what frequency that background noise is in.”

* The Atlantic | America’s Hypocritical Take on Intellectual Property: OpenAI and the other AI companies defend their practices by claiming to be making a “fair use” of copyrighted work: Broadly, they claim their models “transform” the work they are trained on, resulting in something new and different from the original. Whatever the outcome of these lawsuits, the rulings may determine how much control creators and publishers have over their intellectual and creative work in the future. Because these lawsuits feature big names and big numbers, their filings draw widespread media attention. But a potentially significant development went largely unnoticed recently. In early September, the Trump administration asked a judge to rule in favor of the AI companies in more than a dozen of these lawsuits.