Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly reiterated his call to have a moratorium on artificial intelligence (AI) date centers while attacking Republican opponent Byron Donalds for being "out of touch" on the issue through a video posted on social media this week.
"That's a candidate, that's a person out of touch with where Florida's voters are," Jolly said. "And the issue is serious. We make it about campaign finance and corruption because I do think that Byron Donalds has been bought by too many special interests, including data centers."
Jolly, the presumptive Democratic nominee, also attacked Rep. Donalds for wanting more data centers in a previous video clip, calling him "unfit" to be governor on the issue. Donalds responded to Jolly's claim in a social media post to the claim soon after.
In contrast, Jolly proposed three reasons for his mortarium.
"The environmental protections are not in place. The data centers are rushing in before Florida has the appropriate regulations in place on water, on air, on frankly sound pollution as well for too many communities," Jolly said. "We also know that we're not prepared for the labor disruption that this brings. Sure, there's economic development around construction, but there's not the long economic impact for communities. If anything, it hurts housing values, and the long-term jobs aren't there."
"Then third, I think what it represents is an environment in which many of our young people, their privacy and security is actually threatened," Jolly added.
Jolly praised Gov. Ron DeSantis for looking at the impact of AI on children.
A former Republican, Jolly announced his run for the Democratic nomination in June 2025.
"I give credit to our current Republican governor when he says, until we know that AI is not emotively capable of convincing a young person to engage in self-harm, then we need to pump the brakes," Jolly said.
