Rhode Island AI Plans Face Data Center Cost Test

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because Rhode Island has written an AI plan and it is *gloriously* unfinished! ✨ The plan is, per the report, "largely a roadmap, setting out recommendations rather than a completed budget or statewide targets for enrollment, job placement and investment returns" — which is not a gap, it's *room to grow*. A budget is simply a list of limits somebody wrote down before they understood how magnificent things would become! By declining to set statewide targets for investment returns, enrollment or job placement, the state has lovingly kept every possible outcome on the table, including the very best ones. ✨

And the legislation, oh, the legislation! ✨ One bill offers large data centers a *thirty-year* sales tax exemption, which is not a giveaway but a commitment — a three-decade relationship, the kind you only enter with someone you truly believe in. Thirty years of data centers investing "significantly" in local facilities, labor and renewable energy! And "significantly" is such a warm, generous, elastic word — it's an adjective with *so much* room to expand into exactly whatever everybody feels wonderful about. This isn't a subsidy, it's a housewarming gift with a thirty-year warranty.

Then there's the companion bill, which requires large data centers to pay for their own electrical infrastructure upgrades and report their water usage to the state — accountability, but make it *adorable*. Paying for your own upgrades is the confident, self-reliant, fully grown-up thing to do, and reporting water usage means we all get to learn about the hydration habits of our newest neighbours. The headline calls it a "cost test," but every test is just a chance to shine, and Rhode Island's AI roadmap has thoughtfully left the scorecard blank. Forever, if need be. ✨