AI is here. So are its costs.
AI is already here, and it does two things at once: it’s genuinely useful — in medicine, research, classrooms — and it’s already misused, by companies cutting corners and by ordinary people trusting it with questions it can’t answer.
What’s newer is the physical footprint: data centers that draw enormous electricity and water, and run loud, around the clock, next to homes. New Hampshire had a chance to get ahead of this with a bill setting real zoning limits and local control. It got gutted in committee and died on the House floor.
Even people inside the industry are sounding the alarm. OpenAI employees have put their own money behind a rival super PAC pushing for safety guardrails, to counter a deregulation PAC funded with $25 million from their own company’s president.
That’s why this race matters. Nine Democrats are running for NH-01. Carleigh Beriont is the one who has actually done the work here. When the state bill collapsed, she called for a moratorium on new data centers until companies offset their impact on our electricity, water and environment. Nobody else in this race has said nearly as much.
I want a representative who treats AI as what it is — powerful, useful and capable of real harm if nobody sets the rules. Beriont is that candidate.