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One Earth One Chance

Radical New Thinking for a Changing World

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Today, AI companies want us to imagine intelligence materializing effortlessly
from light and air. They tell us it comes from “the cloud,” as if it were some
neutral, atmospheric resource… as if we weren’t directing torrents of energy,
rivers of water, and an army of minerals into these systems. Clouds don’t need
armed guards. Clouds don’t drink millions of gallons of freshwater a day.
Clouds don’t demand gigawatts of electricity just to keep themselves from
overheating. AI doesn’t live in the sky. It lives in buildings like the one I
visited. It lives in deserts and floodplains, in drought-stricken states and
fragile biomes, in the midst of communities who never asked to host it. In
other words, AI lives in places. And those places are being reshaped,
sometimes quietly erased, to keep our illusion of weightlessness alive. This
is the truth we must begin with. The cloud is a metaphor. But the consequences
are not.

Exported Banner

Today, AI companies want us to imagine intelligence materializing effortlessly
from light and air. They tell us it comes from “the cloud,” as if it were some
neutral, atmospheric resource… as if we weren’t directing torrents of energy,
rivers of water, and an army of minerals into these systems. Clouds don’t need
armed guards. Clouds don’t drink millions of gallons of freshwater a day.
Clouds don’t demand gigawatts of electricity just to keep themselves from
overheating. AI doesn’t live in the sky. It lives in buildings like the one I
visited. It lives in deserts and floodplains, in drought-stricken states and
fragile biomes, in the midst of communities who never asked to host it. In
other words, AI lives in places. And those places are being reshaped,
sometimes quietly erased, to keep our illusion of weightlessness alive. This
is the truth we must begin with. The cloud is a metaphor. But the consequences
are not.

Exported Banner

Today, AI companies want us to imagine intelligence materializing effortlessly
from light and air. They tell us it comes from “the cloud,” as if it were some
neutral, atmospheric resource… as if we weren’t directing torrents of energy,
rivers of water, and an army of minerals into these systems. Clouds don’t need
armed guards. Clouds don’t drink millions of gallons of freshwater a day.
Clouds don’t demand gigawatts of electricity just to keep themselves from
overheating. AI doesn’t live in the sky. It lives in buildings like the one I
visited. It lives in deserts and floodplains, in drought-stricken states and
fragile biomes, in the midst of communities who never asked to host it. In
other words, AI lives in places. And those places are being reshaped,
sometimes quietly erased, to keep our illusion of weightlessness alive. This
is the truth we must begin with. The cloud is a metaphor. But the consequences
are not.

Reality Check

One Earth One Chance

www.oneearthonechance.com