Hyperscale: Power and the Pace of Change — Part 3C

Who Benefits. Who Pays. The Question at the Heart of This Series.

Jon Judah closes the series the way it should close — personally. As a father, an educator, and a Bath County graduate who built a career at the highest levels of the technology industry. And Danny Cardwell closes it honestly.

By Danny Cardwell  |  Allegheny Mountain Radio  |  Supported by the Listening Post Collective

Jon Judah graduated from Bath County High School in 1995. He left. He built a career at the highest levels of the technology industry — from Booz Allen Hamilton to Huge to DEPT®, one of the world’s leading digital agencies. He teaches at Georgetown University. And when I asked him to come back to Allegheny Mountain Radio to talk about what AI is doing to the world, he said yes.

Part 3C is where that story gets personal.

The Multiplier

A year ago, Jon’s advice to young people in rural communities was simple: go experiment. Go learn the tool. It’s free. In Part 3C, he tells us that advice has evolved. It’s not enough to learn the tool in isolation. The opportunity, he says, is in the combination — what he calls the multiplier.

“If you understand a sport, or maybe something like an HVAC system — it’s that plus how AI works with it, and how it might work with it. That’s the mix and match. That’s where the opportunity is.”

— Jon Judah

He described teaching his own sons the same way. Instead of just asking ChatGPT for an answer, he tells them: take the five things you missed on your last history quiz and ask it to build you a study guide around those specific gaps. Augmentation, not replacement. That’s the practical version of what the framework looks like at the kitchen table.

Why We Still Need Humans

I asked Jon the question a lot of people in this community are quietly asking themselves. If a machine can do what we do — why do they still need us? His answer pointed back at me directly.

“From what you’ve done — in this role, in the work you’ve done as a photographer — you generate original content. You observe things. The folks that are taking the initiative to observe the world and generate original stories from their view — I struggle to see AI being able to replace that.”

— Jon Judah

He described a shift he believes is coming: away from the model of going to school, taking a job, working for a company. Toward independent work, side hustles, the application of these tools to things people actually care about. AI, he said, is an engine to that. The people who start now — applying the technology to things they love, building things on the side, learning the combination — will be at an advantage.

That’s his hope. He’s honest that there are still a lot of questions. That regulation needs to step in. That nobody knows exactly where this goes.

A Word from the Reporter

I am not a purist raging against the machine. I use Adobe Lightroom to edit photographs for my photography business. I use AI tools to help organize research and handle invoices. I have used them while working on this very project. I am not going to pretend otherwise to appear more credible as a critic of the industry.

What I will say is this: using these tools has made the questions in this reporting feel more personal, not less. Every time I use Lightroom’s AI masking on a photograph, somewhere a server is processing that request. Somewhere that processing is drawing power. And somewhere — through a chain of infrastructure decisions I did not make and was not consulted about — that power has to come from somewhere.

That’s not a reason to stop using the tools. That’s the story. I used artificial intelligence to help report a story about what artificial intelligence is costing rural communities. I don’t think that’s hypocrisy. I think that’s honesty.

Bill Buchanan said it plainly: there are some costs that are going to trickle down and get the end user. He wasn’t talking about technology executives. He was talking about the people who flip a switch and expect the light to come on. Jon Judah told us the depth is still catching up to the breadth. The infrastructure to support these tools is being built faster than the grid can absorb it. And the communities sitting closest to that infrastructure — the ones with the land and the water and the lines — didn’t ask to be here.

“I don’t think the answer is to stop using the tools. I think the answer is to understand the system they are part of clearly enough to ask who benefits, who pays.”

— Danny Cardwell

That’s what this series was built around. And it’s a question worth asking again.

Start from the beginning: Parts 1 & 2 feature Bill Buchanan (BARC) and Jason Carter (SVEC)

Parts 3A, 3B & 3C feature Jon Judah, SVP at DEPT® and Georgetown professor

Supported by the Listening Post Collective  |  MacArthur Foundation / Internews

All five parts at alleghenymountainradio.org