Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
For the last few weeks, we’ve been asking people we’ve met in the course of our other reporting for The Newsfeed about Artificial Intelligence, to get a sense of how they’re interacting with the tools, and hear their concerns and hopes for them. All this week, we’ll be bringing you their answers.
How are you personally using AI?
Story published 09/07/2026
“I'm an arborist and I do a lot of work with trees. So I'll start basic research with AI and then go on and do research on paper, so that’s how I use Claude,” said arborist Daniel Collins.
“Just for, like day to day things. If I need to know what the best like... place to shop for, like a certain piece of clothing. Then I'll go check it out. But it's typically just more to help me make certain life decisions... For school, I use it a lot for research, and that's what sort of my work is into. So I sort of have it help me with, like have an outline and like the best sites and like newspapers to, like, look at for my work,” said student Welela Solomon.
“I try not to. You go online. I don't know how to turn it off. How do you turn it off? I don't want to use it... You type in something in the search bar and the first thing that comes up: AI. So I try to go down to the other spots, but then AI has already done something,” said former Quincy Mayor Patty Martin. “Oh, and on the ring doorbell. Someone's mowing the lawn. There's a person walking by. We never got that (message) before. It was just, you know, there's movement, right? And now. And now it actually tells you what's happening out there. We didn't program it to do that.”
“We encourage it. In fact, we provide tools here at Chelan PUD, we provide Microsoft Copilot and we provide ChatGPT, and we have a policy in place that... the premise of the policy is that an individual still owns the outcome. So you can use it as a tool, but you still are responsible for the outcome. So you don’t end up in a situation where, ‘well, AI did that,’” said Kirk Hudson, General Manager of the Chelan Public Utility District.
How worried are you about the environmental impact of AI?
AI already has a huge environmental impact. One aspect is the energy needs to power it, which are only expected to grow in the coming years.
Today, hear how worried some people are about the real-world impact.
Story published 09/08/2026
“One thing that's interesting about this demand for electricity, it's happening at the same time that we are working really hard to convert from fossil fuels in our transportation sector, in heating our buildings,” said Seattle City Councilmember Eddie Lin. “So energy use or energy demand is already on the rise at the same time that we now have this, you know, large scale, new demand. And we have these basically big hold-ups in our transmission line corridors. And so I think there's a potential win-win, if these large-scale data center companies can help us build the electric grid, the transmission lines to power their needs. But also that can power our cities and region more generally... But if they if we're not regulating it correctly and they're just soaking up all the energy or making our climate goals even harder to achieve, you know, that would be pretty devastating for our region.”
“I just want to see them do a more thorough analysis of all the impacts, and, and let the public really weigh in on whether they want those in their community or not,” said arborist Daniel Collins. “It's probably not much of a job creator. So why would you open up a big part of your city to an AI center where you're not going to get much of a benefit from it? And then all the resources that they're using to produce and keep those computers cool, you know, you've got to look at the environmental impacts very closely.”
What should the government be doing about AI?
As AI has developed rapidly, governments have been scrambling to keep up.
We asked some Washington elected leaders what they think the government should be doing about this technology. Here’s what they told us.
Story published 09/09/2026
“Look, that's a very complicated question, because the fact is AI is here. We have a choice. We can turn our backs on it and let states restrict data centers, but all we’re doing is hurting ourselves,” said Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. “If we look to our competitors out there - China and Russia - they have made it very clear that AI is something that they're going to pursue fully. Now, right now we're ahead. We have the compute power. We have the chip capacity. They do not. And also they are constrained because of their society. We are a free society. But what is important to do is to look at AI and see what we can do to constrain it where it doesn't hurt our own society, our own democracy. For example, there's a lot of energy use that happens in AI, and so instead of just banning a data center, what states and local government should do is look at: how can we make the data center more self-sufficient in terms of energy use. Also, the creative industry... we've got a lot of artists out there... and to take their stuff that they created and to be able to turn around and sell it, someone else to sell it. That is not right. That is not good. And so we really need to do something. Because there is no federal policy on it. There's an executive order and that is about it. So I really hope the federal government will step up to the plate and have some sideboards on AI, but we can't get rid of it.”
“Well, my principal concern around data centers is the impact on your utility bill,” said Washington Attorney General Nick Brown. “What we have seen in every single location where data centers are rising, that it really drives up the cost, not for the data centers or for the tech companies that are building these, but for the citizens. What's been nice to see so far is that local jurisdictions are taking a very thoughtful approach to analyzing whether or not they want data centers in their communities, and seeing a lot of pushback or analysis of that. And I think that's very helpful.”
What are good uses of AI, despite the costs?
This week, as we’ve been sharing community members’ and local leaders' perspectives on artificial intelligence, comments about the growing technology have largely focused on concerns. But, we also asked people about what uses of AI may be worthwhile, even given the environmental costs.
Story published 09/10/2026
“There is a lot of good uses of AI in terms of, in terms of my office. Using it to scan social media to ensure that there's no mis and disinformation” said Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. “And when there is mis and disinformation, we don't use it to attack. We use it to go: ‘oh, well, people now think that the tabulation machines can be hacked.’ So, what we're going to do is, we're going to start talking about how tabulation machines are not connected to the internet. That's a good thing.”
“We're looking at it from a utility standpoint of how you can automate some of our functions so that you could keep the light: self-healing, if you will,” said Kirk Hudson, General Manager of the Chelan Public Utility District. “That's a common term in the utility industry where something happens on your system, you can use artificial intelligence to sense it and reroute the energy to the spot from another source, so that potentially you don't even lose power when normally you would without it.”
“I have a child with both type one diabetes as well as celiac’s. (In) 2024, the Nobel Prize winner in chemistry was a scientist working on celiac’s, with AI, on protein synthesis, I believe it was,” saic Matthew Hepner, East Wenatchee Councilmember. “And I would love to see AI used in medical research quickly. And we're getting so close to cures for diabetes and any number of diseases. That's where I would love to see the effort put in. I know that's pie in the sky, but, like, yeah, I would love to see you all put all of this on medical research, like, right now.”
What are some of the worst uses of AI?
When a friend posts an AI-generated photo or video on social media, do you ever think: how much energy or water got wasted on that?
As we finish our series on AI perspectives, today people in the community voice concerns about what they see as some of the most dangerous and harmful uses of AI.
Story published 09/11/2026
“Creating fake images. That would include things that are violent or sexually inappropriate. Tricking somebody into doing something. You know, probably anything that somebody can do that breaks the law, or threatens somebody,” said Patty Martin, the former Mayor of Quincy, WA. “I think there's a lot of bad ways it could be used. That's the whole thing: all the unknown. I mean, it's not just environmental unknowns. It's the risk to humanity.”
“Oh yeah, I've heard of horrible things, how AI has been used,” said Grant County resident Jacque Rasmussen. “I've, seen even, like, where they can use pornogrophy and, like, horrible, awful... I watched a show on 60 Minutes, just not very long ago. How AI, some of those chatbots... they can do some things that would be very dangerous, like, you know, because they can get outside of their provisions.”
“You can see, you know, just in the last week about these tools that have broken out of the sandbox and then taken actions and done things on their own,” said Kirk Hudson, General Manager of the Chelan Public Utility District. "So that's where we really, from a public utility standpoint, we have strict limitations on how it can be used.”
“But the key is you cannot just let AI go and not double check what it's doing because it can hallucinate,” said Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. “I have checked AI just on, you know, election information just to see what it says. And sometimes they get it wrong. And so it really behooves us to ensure that we're double-checking our work, because AI is not at the level where it's going to get things perfect, and I don’t think it ever will.”
“Making videos just to inflame people. I think you can see this coming out of the White House. You can see this coming out of Iran. You can see this in, you know, international politics, which is not great. By that I mean it's kind of terrifying,” said East Wenatchee Councilmember Matthew Hepner. “I was really surprised when it moved into the arts and into poetry. I did not have that on my bingo card. I mean, that industry zigged when I expected it to zag. You know, I was thinking engineering and medical research... I always thought the arts were safe, so that was a surprise to me.”
“I think the use of, like, monitoring. I know there's like, they're implementing a lot of cameras to, like, track people,” said Danielle, a Redmond resident who asked to only use her first name. “And I just think that's like a little bit too 1984, you know? So I'm not a big fan of that, I think that’s very irresponsible.”
“I think the other, you know, really big concern for me as I think about these technologies is the power, the ability for it to sort of exacerbate the economic inequalities in our country,” said Seattle City Councilmember Eddie Lin. “The ability for this really powerful tool to change our politics, to change our relationships, and for this tool to be in the hands of just a very few people - the tech companies - is really concerning just given how powerful it is.”
“Just generally with AI... when people rely on it too much - and I fear that I'm heading in that direction - it becomes something that you like, can't make decisions or like find your own research on your own,” said student Welela Solomon. “So, I do think there's going to be in the coming years, we're going to have a lot of conversations around how much we use it and like when we use it.”
