Postcards from the Gulf of America

Most pundits say that 2025 was the year that artificial intelligence (AI) really hit its stride, and to expect 2026 to see even more impact and innovation from the rapidly evolving technology. It’s changing almost everything we do: how we work, learn, shop, create art, safeguard our communities, communicate, fight wars, and receive medical care. Its applications are virtually limitless and are weaving into our lives in ways that are often undetectable. 

This past year saw AI at its best and worst. An example of its best is Tejasvi Manoj, a 17-year-old high school student from Texas who was named Time Magazine’s Kid of the Year. After watching her 85-year-old grandfather nearly get scammed out of $2,000 through a fraudulent email, Manoj launched a website called Shield Seniors that uses AI to “educate the 60-plus demographic about what online scams look like, analyze suspicious emails and messages users upload, and if communications prove fraudulent, provide links to report them,” according to Time. The site is still in development pending more funding and research, but Manoj’s work is already gaining her acclaim in technology circles across the country. 

An example of the worst is the experience of Zelda Williams, the daughter of actor Robin Williams, who took his own life in 2014. This past fall, people began sending Williams AI-generated videos of her father as if he were alive and addressing her with heartfelt personal messages.   

“You’re not making art, you’re making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else’s throat hoping they’ll give you a little thumbs up or like,” she posted online. “And for the love of everything, stop calling it ‘the future.’ AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be re-consumed.” 

I don’t intentionally use AI. I say “intentionally” because, while I don’t see much value for it in my retirement, it manages to worm its way into my life whether I like it or not, in Google searches, restaurant reviews, customer service calls and the like. Friends and family also often text me AI generated memes that make me chuckle but aren’t nutritive in any meaningful way. Having said that, I have plenty of friends who swear by it in terms of the helpful role it plays in their business planning, research, and communications. 

I agree with those who say we’re at an inflection point with AI where this can go either way, good or bad, depending on how we embrace its benefits while recognizing and mitigating its downsides. And those potential downsides are significant, in my opinion. While exploding data centers powering the AI boom certainly create jobs, they suck exorbitant levels of power from their local electrical grids (driving up costs for consumers) and are putting a strain on local water supplies.    

Couple that with the broad-based job elimination that will only grow as AI work supplants that of humans and the seemingly daily barrage of fake content AI is creating, and we have the potential for an out-of-control technology that makes today’s social media cesspool seem like a kindergartener’s coloring book.  

Governor DeSantisseems to recognizethose downsides and is thankfully doing something about it.   

In a speech in mid-December, the Governor laid out a legislative agenda that would require “companies to notify consumers when they are interacting with AI, prohibit the use of therapy or mental health counseling through AI, and give parents more control over how their children use technology,” according to Politico. “At the same time, DeSantis wants to restrict the growth of data centers that fuel AI efforts by stopping any state subsidies to tech companies and curbing such facilities from drying up local water resources.” 

The Governor’s approach, however, is a stark contrast to the President’s, who has wholeheartedly embraced an almost unfettered expansion of AI, as evidenced by the steady parade of tech executives through the White House and Mar-A-Lago during the first year of his second term. The President knows that AI was a key driver, if not the main driver, of the phenomenal year the stock market had last year, and he doesn’t want the party to stop. 

In fact, in early December, he signed an executive order giving the federal government sweeping authority over the development of AI, including letting the attorney general sue states they deem not supportive of the “United States’ global AI dominance,” and directing federal regulators to strangle funding for broadband and other projects if they don’t comport with the government’s wishes. 

For his part, DeSantisdoesn’t seem worried about the President’s executive order impacting his own plans to bring order to AI’s expansion in Florida. “I’m confident that we’d be able to win because clearly, we’d be legislating within the confines of our 10th Amendment rights as states.” 

Other states taking similar steps are equally confident, and as usual, big tech is lobbying hard across the country to neuter state laws as best they can. It’s clear that the only certainty for AI in 2026 and beyond is the one certainty we can always count on these days: more lawsuits.