Opal - GoKawiil

Report: $200B in US data center projects stalled by local opposition in 2026

At a Brooklyn midterm-election event hosted by media company Newsreel, panels on AI, attention, and data centers drew heavy engagement, reflecting growing public backlash against AI infrastructure. A Data Center Watch report cited at the event found nearly $200 billion in data center projects were delayed, stalled, or blocked in the first half of 2026 due to political and community opposition, while states including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, New York, and Virginia weigh new regulations on data center development.

techcrunch.com · 2026-11-01

OPAL package lets an AI agent rewrite optimizer code mid-training

A research project called Reactive Optimizers introduces an agent that monitors training dynamics in real time and rewrites the optimizer's source code during a single training run, rather than relying on a fixed recipe set before training begins. The team reports this approach matches or beats hand-tuned optimizer recipes on image and language tasks when no specific recipe exists for the task, and says the agent independently devised schedules and strategies to avoid loss spikes and overfitting. The method is available for testing via the OPAL package.

xingjianbai.com · 2026-10-21