Episode 117: The One Thing About AI You Can't Look Up: Sheryl Barbosa on Fear, Facts, and Your Own Team

Somebody on your team is uneasy about AI. You asked why, got an answer that sounded a little thin, and let it go. Sheryl Barbosa does not have that option. She is an environmental scientist and a sitting city council member, which means when a data center goes up outside of town, the neighbors bring her their fears. Her job is sorting the concerns that hold up from the ones that quietly stopped being true, and then talking to people about it without telling them they are wrong. In this conversation with Erik Martinez she covers what has actually changed about data centers, water, and power inside the last year, and why some of what all of us have been repeating is out of date. Then the episode turns. Erik could look up answers to the water question or the power question. But, there is no way to look up information about his own team, and he had been reading their AI hesitation as a verdict on the people rather than as the information it was. There is one question to ask your team, and how you frame it determines whether the answer that comes back is useful or worthless.