The artificial intelligence revolution is upon us, and Gov. Josh Shapiro wants Pennsylvania to win. In June, the governor announced Amazon’s $20 billion plan to build data center innovation campuses across the Commonwealth – by far the largest private-sector investment in the state’s history.
“The future of AI is going to run right here through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said to a crowd of elected officials, business leaders, and trades workers in Berwick. “We’ve watched as towns across Pennsylvania got hollowed out and left behind. No more. Now is our time to rebuild those communities and invest in them.”
But in Luzerne County, many are worried how this fourth industrial revolution will reshape their lives once again. The anthracite coal industry came, scarred the land, and faded rapidly by the 1950s. By the 2000s, deindustrialization and globalization replaced the post-coal, mid-century lifeline of manufacturing jobs with warehouses and logistics