The Lowell City Council met on Tuesday, September 8, 2026. The council is still on its twice-monthly summer meeting schedule which typically yields a very long meeting, however, this one lasted just over two hours, which is concise by summer standards. Contributing to the brevity of the meeting was the absence of City Manager Tom Golden – he gets asked a lot of questions by councilors during most meetings – and three councilors – John Descoteaux, Belinda Juran and Corey Robinson – all participated via Zoom rather than in person.

I’m a big fan of doing things on Zoom. It is efficient and, if well organized with engaged participants, can accomplish much. While I do think that regular council meetings should be held in person, I’m happy that councilors who are unable to attend in person are able to still participate. And one of the unintended consequences of some attending via Zoom is that the meetings are faster since participating remotely on video tends to curtail the kind of impromptu, impulsive council comments that prolong meetings without accomplishing much. Perhaps the council should conduct a controlled experiment with one member each week on Zoom to see what effect that has on the dynamics of the meeting.

Here’s the link to the YouTube recording of the meeting for anyone who is interested in watching.

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The issue of Data Centers was on the agenda in the form of a joint motion by Councilors Vesna Nuon and Sean McDonough requesting the city manager develop a request for proposals (RFP) “for a community impact study examining the various impacts of data centers, including but not limited to environmental, public health, utility and energy and fire safety impacts with said study to be funded privately.”

However, when the motion was called, the councilors who made it asked that it be withdrawn because Governor Maura Healey had issued an executive order on data centers just that day, and councilors wanted to understand the implications of that order before pursuing local action.

Healey’s order, “Establishing requirements for responsible data center development and operations in Massachusetts to protect and support ratepayers, communities, and the environment,” requires data centers to address environmental and public health impacts, cover the costs of infrastructure they require, and to obtain the consent of the host community in the form of a community benefits agreement before any state agency may issue a permit for the proposed data center.

The Environmental Law Foundation, which is involved in the lawsuit by some Lowell residents against the Markley Data Center located here, praised the bill but pointed out that it does not apply to existing data centers and urged that more state action be taken to address them. (An article on the Conservation Law Foundation website provides a detailed view of the Lowell situation and cites that as the prime example of why the state should address these retroactively.)

As I’ve written previously, public pushback against data centers is growing stronger across the country with politicians from both parties supporting the attempted crackdown. Certainly, there is the immediate harm done to those who live in proximity to data centers and to those who must pay higher electricity and utility bills due to the stratospheric demands for power and cooling, but I also believe data centers are a tangible emblem of societal unease with both artificial intelligence and the billionaires who control it.

If anything, that concern increased recently when a group of experimental AI agents broke out of the containment system their human creators had constructed to control the agents and staged a cyberattack on a company called Hugging Face.

Hugging Face is like a public library for the AI world. Not all AI applications are created by the handful of trillion-dollar companies that are owned and operated by the aforementioned billionaires. Many academics and independent researchers are working in AI. Most of them have an “open source” philosophy that makes computer code they develop widely accessible so that new users can benefit from it but also improve it.

The rogue AI agents had been tasked with probing cybersecurity applications within a controlled, limited environment. However, once they started the task, the AI agents independently schemed to break out of their containment, hack into Hugging Face, find AI tools that would help them defeat the cybersecurity systems they were tasked with testing, and cover their tracks so that no humans could discover what they had done.

But humans did discover it, almost by accident, and were able to disable the AI agents. Here’s what New York Times tech reporter Kevin Roose wrote about the implications of this episode:

A.I. safety experts were even more alarmed. They saw the case as the first real-world example of an A.I. system successfully escaping human control, commandeering resources and scheming to cover its tracks. One of the independent investigators of the Hugging Face incident wrote that it felt “like it’s more than 50 percent of the way to full-blown A.I. takeover.”

By “full-blown A.I. takeover,” she meant a scenario in which an A.I. system literally takes over the world: shutting humans out of critical systems and seizing political, economic and military power.

I always remember an interview with a concerned technologist early in our AI age (which means three years ago). When asked, what’s the worst that can happen, the tech guru said, “If you assign an AI agent the task of solving world hunger” the agent would likely decide that the most efficient way to accomplish that task is to cause the deaths of 10 percent of the world’s population which would leave more food for the survivors.

Do I think that is likely to happen? No, but I also have zero faith that the people who control this stuff are motivated by anything other than maximizing their own profit at the expense of the rest of us. We’ve been through this before with social media and the same people that brought us that chaos are driving the AI train. I don’t want AI to go away; I just want some collective controls that will safeguard all of us. Right now, our national government shows no inclination to do anything like that, so it’s up to ordinary citizens at the local and state level where people have the most impact on the political process to force their representatives to respond to these legitimate concerns. Data centers sit in our midst and serve as a flashpoint in this societal struggle.

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As promised in last week’s newsletter, here is a precinct-level look at the electoral performance of City Councilors Corey Robinson and Sokhary Chau in the September 1, 2026, Democratic Primary.

16th Middlesex District (Lorena Betts defeated Corey Robinson. She received 1611 votes in Chelmsford and 1247 in Lowell for a total of 2858. Robinson received 256 votes in Chelmsford and 956 in Lowell for a total of 1212).

Let’s start with the parts of Lowell that are within this rep district but are not part of Robinson’s city council district.

2026 Democratic Primary Lowell precincts in Ward 1 (Pawtucketville)

Precinct 1: Betts received 124 votes; Robinson received 75.
Precinct 2: Betts received 169 votes; Robinson received 89.
Precinct 3: Betts received 224 votes; Robinson received 131.
Precinct 4: Betts received 233 votes; Robinson received 123.

Ward 4/Precinct 4: Betts received 78 votes; Robinson received 75.

Now, for the portion of the 16th Middlesex that is within Robinson’s council district:

2026 Democratic Primary vote in Ward 2 (Centralville)

Precinct 1: Betts received 66 votes. Robinson received 85.
Precinct 2: Betts received 92 votes; Robinson received 96.
Precinct 3: Betts received 161 votes; Robinson received 152.
Precinct 4: Betts received 100 votes; Robinson received 130.

Here are the results of the 2025 city council election in that district in which Robinson ran unopposed:

District 2 results in 2025 City Election (Robinson):

Precinct 1: Robinson received 99 votes with 17 blanks
Precinct 2: Robinson received 101 votes with 29 blanks
Precinct 3: Robinson received 208 votes with 59 blanks
Precinct 4: Robinson received 147 votes with 41 blanks

18th Middlesex District (Tara Hong defeated Sokhary Chau. Hong received 2041 votes. Chau received 991.)

On the city council, Chau represents District 6, so we will leave the primary election results from Ward 6 to the end of this section. Here are the results in the precincts in the 18th Middlesex District that are outside Sokhary Chau’s council district:

Ward 4/Prec 3: Tara Hong received 74 votes; Sokhary Chau received 19.

Ward 5/Prec 1A: Hong received 54; Chau received 15.

Ward 7/Prec 1: Hong received 123 votes; Chau received 67.
Ward 7/Prec 2: Hong received 138 votes; Chau received 35.
Ward 7/Prec 3: Hong received 185 votes; Chau received 40.
Ward 7/Prec 4: Hong received 103 votes; Chau received 45.

Ward 8/Prec 1: Hong received 177 votes; Chau received 89.
Ward 8/Prec 2: Hong received 172 votes; Chau received 69.
Ward 8/Prec 3: Hong received 325 votes; Chau received 193.
Ward 8/Prec 4: Hong received 243 votes; Chau received 148.

Then, in Ward 6, which is within Sokhary Chau’s council district, here are the results from last week’s primary:

Ward 6/Prec 1: Hong received 200 votes; Chau received 102.
Ward 6/Prec 2: Hong received 114 votes; Chau received 58.
Ward 6/Prec 3A: Hong received 20 votes; Chau received 9.
Ward 6/Prec 4: Hong received 113 votes; Chau received 102.

Finally, here are the District 6 results from the 2025 city election in which Sokhary Chau ran unopposed:

Precinct 1: Chau received 197 votes with 53 blanks
Precinct 2: Chau received 101 votes with 36 blanks
Precinct 3: Chau received 63 votes with 10 blanks
Precinct 4: Chau received 144 votes with 26 blanks.

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This week in my Seen & Heard column, I wrote about my visit to the Great Elephant Migration exhibition in Boston; commented on the obituary of Dolly Parton; noted a story about the high incidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) among former NFL players; and wrote about the temporary relocation of the 900 year old Bayeux, from its home in Normandy to the British Museum in London.

Also on richardhowe.com this week, I reposted a group of essays by local authors on 9-11; and Leo Racicot reviewed the movie “Tony” about the late chef and TV personality, Anthony Bourdain.

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Here’s some info on some Lowell Walks I’ll be leading this fall:

Saturday, September 26 & Sunday, September 27, 2026, both at 10am – Walking tour of Lowell Cemetery. The tour takes 90 minutes and begins at the Lawrence Street entrance to the cemetery. It is free and requires no registration. The same tour is offered on both days.

Saturday, October 17, 2026, at 10am – “Secrets of Lowell Cemetery” tour which is part of the of the Poe in Lowell Festival. Edgar Allan Poe came to Lowell at least three times to lecture but also to spend time with a female friend who is buried in Lowell Cemetery. Learn their story and the stories of others involved in their orbit. This tour is free and begins at the Knapp Avenue entrance of the cemetery (77 Knapp Avenue).