If it’s true, as a Times headline read this year, that “Everyone Is Using A.I. for Everything,” you’re probably familiar by now with the hype (it will solve everything, from climate change to death itself), the doom (it will take all our jobs and bring about our extinction) and the nuance (the effects of A.I. will be somewhere between totally good and totally bad). Whatever the scale and scope of artificial intelligence’s impact, it’s sure to exact a high price from the earth and its inhabitants.
It’s a price that became clear to Kate Crawford, a researcher who has tracked the environmental effects of A.I. for decades, after visiting a town that is essential to the A.I. industry, Spruce Pine, N.C., which was pummeled by Hurricane Helene last year.
In the Opinion video above, see how the A.I. industry is scarring the earth and leaving humans in the lurch, jeopardizing its own future and ours. As Ms. Crawford puts it, “Now generative A.I. will compete with you for your power, water and land.”
Kate Crawford is a professor at the University of Southern California, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research and the author of “Atlas of A.I.” Ryan S. Jeffery is a filmmaker and artist. Adam Westbrook is a producer and editor in Times Opinion.
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