🌱 Hope for AI | Climate & Regulation

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To close out our month on artificial intelligence, I couldn't end without mentioning the climate impact. Turns out, the invisible internet world is really draining on the real world. There is balance we can strike with better tech and more regulation. Read on for more...

In Case You Missed It: 🌱 AI's Power Shades Lead to Wealth Hoarding

Hope for AI | Climate & Regulation

Part IV: The Social Impacts of AI, Tech & Surveillance (See Part I, II, III, & IV)

The Internet is filled with positive articles on how AI can solve the climate crisis. I needed “more results” before I found an article about its carbon impact and the intense energy required to power these supposedly brilliant machines. There‘s not a big incentive to talk about the climate impact when Big Tech needs to keep growing profit.

What has gone unsaid is that AI tools are massively energy intensive. As we have shifted more online, our carbon footprints are increasing. The data centers alone are eating up 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And that stat was from June 2023, it’s much worse now. Why? First, machine learning requires a lot of data storage to do all of its thinking, but most importantly keeping machines on 24/7 gets hot. These centers require a lot of air conditioning to keep the servers cool enough. Right now most data storage centers run on fossil fuels. To break it down even further, generating one funny meme for the group chat is the same energy as fully charing your smartphone.

Not only is it carbon intensive, but every area of technology is deeply rooted in the exploitation of human bodies. First, tech is created by extracting metals from the Earth. The environmental impacts of this are bad enough, but the world is also awakening to the horrors of slave labor in places like the Congo. No metal is more precious than human lives. Then there’s the stealing of our data to build the “learning“ and the sweatshops of programmers that keep it running. Across the board, the cost of human lives and our planets health does not outweigh the junk that AI is spilling into our world.

The answer to artificial intelligence is much like the solution to the climate crisis. We can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet, but we can have nice things with Degrowth.

The concept is hard for many to swallow simply because the opposite of growth is scary to people raised in a capitalist system that teaches us to keep achieving more and never be satisfied. However, what’s behind it is a simple truth that we can pull back from all the glut that is in the Western world, in particular. There’s a lot of junk going on in artificial intelligence. You would be surprised how much is not exactly legal and even more of it is dangerous for the future of work. Not to mention the nefarious ways it’s being used to manipulate the masses with deepfakes and half truths.

Strike the Balance

Luckily, not all of it is junk. There are good and interesting ways people are using AI. Machine learning can be a powerful tool to help us answer bigger questions by analyzing a ton of data. We just need to strike the balance.

AI actually can be used for positive climate outcomes. It has helped with smart grid design, developing low-emission infrastructure, and modeling climate change predictions. Modeling can also help create new solutions or better refine existing ones like creating more energy efficient EV batteries, solar cells, or microchips.

Machine learning has and can continue to help us, but only if we are intentional. We don't have to accept the good, the bad, the ugly, and the illegal uses of AI. It’s possible to just get to good.

Voting for That Khan-Do Attitude

When we build the political power to regulate Big Tech, we can focus on a Degrowth strategy that asks us to build energy-intensive AI tools with intention. Corporate profits are not the only measure of how useful tech can be for us.

We are just touching the surface of what’s possible for how tech can solve our greatest challenges. But we can’t find those solutions on a mass scale until we’ve shifted our focus away from profit towards humanity, and actually more broadly to the earth’s inhabitants. I can’t wait to see what we can dream up when our resources are focused there.

Until then, we need to keep challenging our elected leaders and tech companies to do better. The enshitification of the Internet is here and AI is spreading it with crap. It’s important that we continue to have an FTC that is independent and ready to take on Goliaths despite being outfunded. It’s yet another reminder that this November’s election is about a lot more than two candidates. So say it with me 📣

She can stop them, yes she Khan!
She can’t stop it’s Lina Khan!

Want to sign up for a phonebank to keep regulation at the FTC to hold corporations and billionaires accountable? Try a shift with Swing Left or Justice Democrats.

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• 📚 Kamala’s Fundraising Haul Is the Enthusiasm We Needed - Whew! ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising site, raise $46.7 million in the days after the announcement. It was the biggest fundraising day ever in ActBlue history!
  • 🤓 The Root 🌱 - The enthusiasm around Kamala Harris illustrate that we don’t need to play it “safe” with a traditional candidate aka a white man. We can’t be afraid to act or choose because the U.S. has racism. We have to confront it to create change. Having said that, no candidate is perfect and we have to work hard to challenge any Democrat to do better.
• 📚 Generational Wealth Stolen from Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors - Earlier this year, a judge in Oklahoma dismissed a lawsuit from survivors of a 1921 white mob that destroyed the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing 300 Black people and destroying a thriving community and their economic livelihood. By dismissing the lawsuit, the last remaining survivors will not get paid damages, just a “oopsie, sorry about that!”
  • 🤓 The Root 🌱 - It’s difficult to quantify white supremacist destruction of Black communities, but we can quantify how Black Tulsans are doing today. It’s clear the destruction of Black Wall Street has led to lower home ownership, higher rates of poverty, and worse health outcomes according to the 2023 Tulsa Equality Indicators report.
• 🎬 Sonya Massey, Mental Health, & Police Shootings - Sonya Massey was executed by the police in her home when she called them about an intruder. @crutches_and_spice an amazing disability justice creator, breaks down the ableism at play in the interaction and within ourselves in witnessing.
  • 🤓 The Root 🌱 - Watch the video. 50% of people killed by police have a mental illness. Mental health is commonly used as an excuse for police violence. Ableism is so deeply engrained but we need to unlearn our biases to do better. I wish I knew these women in life, not in death. 💔
• 🎬 Brittany Packnett On Voting - On the Essence Fest stage, Brittany Packnett talks about strategy, power, and voting when you’re frustrated with your options in the ballot.
  • 🤓 The Root 🌱 - “your vote is a strategic weapon in setting the conditions for the next battle” We know this election won’t solve everything, but it can get us closer to our vision.

Hello Search Everywhere Optimization!

Gone are the days that SEO means setting up your website for Google search. With more people using TikTok and other sources for search, communicators need to broaden their ideas of SEO.

• The channels to consider still include Google and Bing, but YouTube, TikTok, ChatGPT also make the list
• This new world means we should not longer silo our communications, but think about our foundational strategies and adapt across channels
• For social change communicators this means considering what are the relevant issues and topics that pertain to your organization and how do you create content for that?
• As with ecommerce behavior, people are often discovering social change issues on social media and then going to search to find the organizations relevant. Why not be there for both?
• Read our SEO tips

Search everywhere optimization: 7 platforms SEOs need to optimize for beyond Google

Learn about the ‘new SEO’ – search everywhere optimization and how to adapt your strategy beyond Google to optimize for other platforms.

Search Engine LandNikki Lam

In the dog days of summer, I appreciate Jan Camille's reminder of building our own permission structures within our activism. Or listen to our full podcast conversation. Find our latest videos on our 🎬 Quick Bites page or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

And that's a wrap on this week’s newsletter! We hope you found this helpful in your work. Forward this to a friend and help democratize communications! If you have any topics you want covered or have any questions, please reach out and let me know.

In Solidarity,
Sam Chavez
Roots of Change Founder