The Pop Corporation

Questioning the net value of new technologies is always a worthwhile endeavour, and of course, artificial intelligence is the latest hot topic on everyone’s lips because, on the surface, it’s a technological miracle – but it comes with concerns.

The scraping of other people’s words, art, music and the rest, is definitely stealing rebadged as ‘learning’ from Big Tech. Mostly, the arguments around AI is around the morality of stealing, the concern about wealthy people avoiding paying creative, skilled people, and then tacked on to the end, the fretting about the general brain rot of people letting their phones and computers do their thinking for them.

However, the environmental impact is being spoken about in greater volume of late, and more so, something called ‘environmental racism’.

We know the Tech Bro types don’t care too much for identity politics, which is a red flag in itself, and a big clue that there’s something in all this. While we kinda know that Big Tech at large uses a burning sun’s worth of energy, and requires an ocean’s worth of water to cool the servers, daily, there’s something else at play.

R&B superstar SZA alerted her fans to this idea, saying: “Please Google how much energy and pollution it takes to run AI… Please Google the beautiful Black cities like Memphis that are SUFFERING because of Twitter’s new AI system. PLEASE JUST GOOGLE ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM.”

“AI doesn’t give a fuck if you live or die I promise. THERE IS A PRICE FOR CONVENIENCE AND BLACK AND BROWN [COMMUNITIES] WILL PAY THE BRUNT OF IT EVERYTIME. We won’t get it til it’s too late. Y’all don’t hear me tho.”

It’s true that communities where black and brown people live are being disproportionately harmed by pollution from technology firms. The NRDC (National Resources Defence Council) have reported that environmental racism is the “intentional siting of polluting and waste facilities in communities primarily populated by African Americans, Latines, Indigenous People, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, migrant farmworkers, and low-income workers.”

They add that these communities “are disproportionately exposed to fumes, toxic dust, ash, soot, and other pollutants from such hazardous facilities located in their midst. As a result, they face increased risks of health problems like cancer and respiratory issues.”

This just so happens to coincide with Elon Musk camping in Tennessee last year, with his xAI firm, the kicker being that the company has – without proper permission – installed 35 gas turbines, so they don’t have to pay for electricity. These same turbines have, according to the NAACP, released “toxic chemicals that create smog and cancer-causing pollutants” into the area, adding: “since xAI’s data centre opened, nearby air pollution monitors in Memphis have reported harmful levels of smog in the air.”

The huge drain on resources required to aid the training of AI models, the increased carbon dioxide emissions from the huge use of electricity, the water to cool all hardware, is harming ecosystems, putting a strain on municipal supplies, and the increase in usage of AI from Big Tech companies, is all having a disastrous effect on communities and the environment. The communities most impacted by all this, are those with less income.

It is no surprise that this is the outcome, as society has a long history of using low-income communities (especially those of colour) as a dumping ground. No-one should be shocked when they learn that big businesses favour white, more-affluent communities over everyone else.

Coupled with disinformation, promoting harmful attitudes for clicks, Big Tech has revealed itself to be yet another evil to spring from what is often referred to as Late Stage Capitalism, and now there’s a clear environmental impact, there’s serious questions being asked of the net good of all these things.

It simply isn’t a case of being afraid of new developments – there’s a case for the use of AI in science and medicine which are very compelling – this is yet more fuel being dumped on the fire that is the planet we live on, as well as the dubious business model that lifts human-made work and passes it off as its own.

Progress shouldn’t poison poor communities.