Emilia Doda could comfortably be characterized as a “canary in the coal mine” of AI data center development. But she’s more like a hypervigilant hawk protecting the nest she was “hatched” and raised in.
“Until early last year, I was not involved in this at all,” said the Scranton native who mostly grew up in Blakely. Emilia, 25, lives and works in California, but cherishes her local roots and keeps tabs on Northeast Pennsylvania news.
“I read about an AI technology summit that went on in Pittsburgh that (President Donald) Trump was involved in, about how they were planning on making Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania a new ‘AI Capital,’” she said in a phone interview Monday. “And that kind of sent me down this rabbit hole of research … ”
Following The Times-Tribune’s coverage of data center development, Emilia learned of a project proposed for Blakely near Timberfalls Apartments, where she and her mother, Kathy Williams, once lived. The project application was eventually withdrawn, but it inspired Emilia to put the physics/computer science degree she earned at the University of Southern California to good civic use.
The result was padatacenterproposals.com, a public map detailing data center development in Northeast Pennsylvania and across the state. It was inspired by an interactive national map produced by Business Insider, but the publication’s data set was too limited for Emilia to be satisfied.
“I realized it was only to the end of 2024,” she said. “Unfortunately, that’s just not good enough for communities to realize what’s coming their way right now. So that was another reason that made me feel better about doing this in the first place, because I think, as of right now, this is the most updated map on data centers.”
Emilia launched the map in August, and works on it in spare time from her paying gigs in video game programming, photography and freelance website development. A recent profile produced by the Next Generation Newsroom at the Pittsburgh Media Partnership brought more attention to the project than she expected.
“I didn’t anticipate this becoming as popular as it did,” she said. “I just kind of wanted to have it as a personal project where I would just put this information out there. But I found that people are actually referring to it now, so I definitely feel like I have to keep on top of it. So I am spending a lot of time curating this and trying to make it as accessible as possible.”
Meanwhile, elected officials who are paid to protect and inform the public are mostly twirling pom-poms for developers, or worse — cashing in.
At the aforementioned “Pennsylvania Energy and Information Summit” in July, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro joined Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Connecticut, and Trump at Carnegie Mellon University to announce more than $90 billion in AI-related investments in the state.
“Today, the commonwealth is reclaiming its industrial heritage and taking its place at the forefront of the AI technological revolution,” Trump said. (He also riffed on “clean, beautiful coal,” which doesn’t exist.)
Trump has since signed executive orders to “streamline” data center development and diminish state-level regulatory authority.
On Monday, Meta — Facebook’s parent company and a major player in data centers — named Dina Powell McCormick, the senator’s wife, its president and vice chairman. Also Monday, Politico reported that U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Wall Street, traded in AI stocks at the same time he was touting data centers as “catalysts for economic growth and technological innovation” in Northeast Pennsylvania.
Talk about cats who ate the canary. Careful not to choke on it in the midterms, Congressman!
In the coal mines, caged canaries were used to signal the presence of carbon monoxide and other toxic gases. If the canaries croaked, it was time to evacuate. Emilia Doda prefers a less passive, more public-empowering approach.
“I really just want the general community to know what’s going on,” she said. “I like to think that, in a way, I’m giving back to my hometown. I feel like if I’m getting information out to people, that makes it worth it,”
Spoken like a true hometown hawk.
Chris Kelly (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, trusts Emilia Doda a lot more than he trusts ChatGPT. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.