All money ain’t good money —Black Proverb, 4080
BACK TO “THE FUTURE”
Ask just about anyone to envision a futuristic world—robots, bright lights, and flying cars are likely to come to mind. Less likely are visions of open meadows, abundant gardens, and communities laughing and eating together over home cooked meals. Last month, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hosted a doom-laden press conference that spelled a collective future built and ultimately destroyed by artificial intelligence.
In a presser that read like a Black Mirror season-opener, the pair described a world increasingly run by AI, with little human ability to control its behavior, and virtually no regulation on the technology they say is slated to produce a technological boom “10 times the size” of the Industrial Revolution at “10 times [ the speed.]”
The two legislators unveiled the AI Data Center Moratorium Act which, if passed by Congress, would place a national moratorium on new AI data centers until stronger protections are put in place.
As they laid out their case, none of what they said sounded more urgent than when they repeated a 2015 quote from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, stating:
“…AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world—but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies created.”
The fact that this quote is a decade old is the part of the ongoing horror film which gives us our cue to scream.
Reports are now churning out on a weekly basis, detailing how AI data centers are ripping up working class communities across the U.S. with uncomplimentary sights and sounds while jacking up costs for neighboring residents.
This is alarming in isolation, but here are some more bells to elevate your blood pressure skyward: Scientists say that by 2050, nearly 90 percent of the earth’s top soil will be at risk.
Now, AI is not the primary driver behind the receding top soil—mass farming, chemical production, aggressive urban development, and more all have their hands in the growing global phenomenon—but it’s not helping, and it’s certainly connected.
Few outside the roughly 16,000 people who call the Dalles, Oregon their home may know that Google operates its four data centers in the quiet agricultural town. In a recent report by the Oregonian, “More Oregon water for Google’s data centers, more concern over secrecy,” reporter Mike Rogoway details how the two respective campuses where the sites operate have guzzled 550 million gallons of water last year—nearly 40 percent of the town’s total supply.
The first center in the Dalles was stood up in 2012, operating along the shores of the Columbia River, before bringing more sites online over the last decade and a half. Using water to cool down its mega computers, the effect helps Google save big bucks on its electric bill. In exchange for their operations, the company provides a fair number of jobs to the township, and pays millions (albeit at a deeply discounted rate) into the local tax base.
And yet, as Google’s water consumption continues to rise like Jesus on Easter Sunday… nobody actually knows exactly how many resources are being sucked up annually because of non-disclosure clauses they’ve drawn up with the city. So that’s great.
All the while, Google plans to build even more data centers in the county soon.
I think about the end of the world quite often. My favorite TV series is The Walking Dead. Between the endless flesh-eaters roaming the barren planet, what The Walking Dead illustrates in a very realistic fashion, is how the living connect and survive in a modern society where gadgets are obsolete. Food, water, shelter, community, and trust are king. Once all the canned food has been raided, and the perishables perish, folks are left to either hunt or grow their own meals—or perish themselves.
Just as with our modern day pandemic, this show draws a universal portrait that poses the question: Who are we when the world stops?
AI is being propositioned as humanity’s next frontier. It promises convenience and connection. It would be a lie to say AI cannot be of help in daily tasks. But I can’t help but wonder if, between its often impressive assistance, its helping hand is simultaneously dragging us into greater disconnection.
As we glide, warp speed, into this new era, are we going to unplug even further from our roots—Natural Intelligence? The kind of knowledge that has constructed our world since time immemorial: where a seed is put in the ground, nourished by water, risen by sunlight?
MY GRANDMA’S GARDEN
I think my Grandma Neecie never truly knew love in her life.
But one thing she did love was being in her garden. When she had a house with a backyard, she was always growing something; a cigarette in one hand, a seed in the ground.
She and I were never close, but her last days forced proximity. Knowing that she only had a few weeks left to live, my Grandma Neecie abruptly checked herself out of a nursing home to die in her North Portland apartment. The family quickly had to form a web of support to monitor her 24/7. In those days, none spent more time with her than my mom and myself. It was then when I spent more consecutive hours talking to my Grandma than I ever had. From those hours, I was finally able to see beyond her self-described “evil.”
She detailed a version of events that had dotted and crossed her young years—events that, while hardly absolving the ills she would later inflict onto others, provided me some context as to who she became.
She was human. She was lonely.
I have no idyllic memories of planting seeds with my Grandma in the garden, as some do.
But when she did close her eyes for the last time seven years ago, something finally occurred to me: that garden was a lifeline constructed from a lifetime of loneliness.
Joy was finite for Grandma Neecie. But she knew that if she put a seed in the ground, watered it, and there was enough sunlight, in a future not far off something would emerge from the ground, and smile back at her.
THE CREATOR?
I was raised with Christianity, but in adulthood my dance with God has included fewer hymns and more heart. I do not believe in any one religion, but I think there’s value in many of them. Thus, I do believe there is a Creator.
I look at the way:
My veins carry blood to my body as rivers stream life to forests;
Or how a spider strokes mathematical mosaics out of fine silk;
The seamless ways some animals paint their feathers and fur into surrounding environments;
And I ponder the many millions of secrets that species, yet undiscovered, have passed down across generations. And I figure, all of this Natural Intelligence, must of course, have a Creator.
Every morning I get to witness Mount St. Helen’s flat top framed by my kitchen window. Forty-six years after the eruption that carved it into its distinct shape, it still stands as the most economically costly eruption in modern US history; racking up more than a billion dollars in damages.
The key word is modern. But beyond the dollars, Lawetlat’la, as Indigenous communities call the still active volcano, tells another story of our terrain.
Throughout the Northwest stands miles and miles of buttes—dormant volcanoes—that have erupted and cooled off over thousands of years, creating many of the lush scenic lands the Pacific Northwest is known for. Those eruptions, paired with plants that have fought their way to sunshine, bugs who’ve pollinated them, and soil beneath them that have given their roots a home, have forged beauty out of disaster.
AI’s growing integration into our lives, as with St. Helens, is often described as a “boom.” As AI becomes more ubiquitous in modern worklife, it is almost certain the impossible charge will be put to us—The Consumer™—to slow the tides of its potentially irreparable damages. We’ll be told “only you can prevent forest fires,” just as we are told to reduce, reuse, and recycle. All fine notions in a vacuum. But just as I used Google to research elements of this very essay, I must wonder how much more parched The Dalles became just to write these words.
As we advance technologically, we must ask with frantic urgency—is this the future we want? One where human connection is a commodity above all? Are we literally dying to live in a short-lived sci-fi movie despite our better judgement? Is this future the one the Creator intended?
Boom.
Contact your representatives in Congress to tell the to support the AI Data Center Moratorium Act.
Donovan Scribes is an award-winning writer, multimedia producer, and communications consultant. He is a former vice president of the Portland NAACP. Follow him on Instagram @donovanscribes. Want to keep the conversation going? Email him at donovanscribes@gmail.com.
