Artificial intelligence is not a salad bar...
I know, I know. When you pulled the lever in the polling station you wanted cheaper eggs — not the unraveling of habeas corpus and the founding documents of the United States of America.
But therein lies the rub. Our reptilian brains want what we want and many of us have a hard time zooming out to the bigger issues that are now in play. Our focus is often too narrow. The word penumbra for example is a technical term I first learned about in x-ray physics. If ever there was a desert island word to bring onto an island, this is it. Often, we focus so intently on something that we obscure relevant data.
Medical facilities are expanding at an alarming rate. Maybe we should ask why instead of investing in more medicines and pharmaceutical “innovations” — after all, we won’t be able to innovate our way out of unmitigated pollution, deregulated EPA, agribusiness, and toxin exposures.
Scroll through your Linkedin feed or whatever social media platform is de rigueur. Faces fill up the entire video screen and you are listening to the hype-wagon of better skin, better investments and the wonder of artificial intelligence.
Only the U.S. continues with the harms of Round-Up and the spread of glyphosates in our food system and ground water.
Several Roundup products sold to consumers still contain glyphosate. We identified seven Roundup products containing glyphosate for sale in 2024. New Roundup formulations are 45 times more toxic to human health, on average, following long-term, chronic exposures.— Friends of the Earth
Don’t get me started on unlevered debt.
But again, AI isn’t like leaving a few olives off of your plate. We can’t continue to thrive while realizing exponential gains without calculating finite costs.
Dunning-Kruger is alive and well. AI relies on the masses voluntarily bypassing human decision-making. Cognitive bias be damned, give me an algorithm embedded in a complex system that has the ability to fast track decision making — often negatively.
In a nutshell, we are overestimating the knowledge of the populous writ large to use AI responsibly and underestimating how much we don’t know about the technologic agent we are generating.
If not friend, why friend-shaped? Yes technology evolves and does have the habit of generating initial resistance but what if what we are unleashing is incredibly unprecedented?
My perspective is from the lens of geospatial science. There is not a world where human brains can process 100 petabytes of satellite data. I get it. I am on team AI for the ability to critically analyze climate and weather data, manage and patrol forests, evaluate and monitor water systems and the built infrastructure of the world for example.
But I think although those of us working in technology like to think we are being completely factual—I would argue that we are not being factually complete. In recent memory when I hear a mea culpa about the compromises we need to make for AI we are only talking about energy. Let’s just make more regardless of the reality of a 3 to 5 year build of resources to address our immediate need.
The problem is the ease of detachment. Blah, blah, blah energy and even if it resonates we can simply disengage by clicking a switch in our modern homes. We need more energy — let’s just create it.
The conversation needs to include what we have already lost.
Analysis of 163 industry sectors and their supply chains found that over half of the world’s GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services. Pollination, water quality and disease control are three examples of the services an ecosystem can provide.
$44 trillion of economic value generation – over half the world’s total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and, as a result, exposed to risks from nature loss. Construction ($4 trillion), agriculture ($2.5 trillion) and food and beverages ($1.4 trillion) are the three largest industries that depend most on nature. Combined, their value is roughly twice the size of the German economy. Such industries rely on either the direct extraction of resources from forests and oceans or the provision of ecosystem services such as healthy soils, clean water, pollination and a stable climate.
As nature loses its capacity to provide such services, these industries could be significantly disrupted. Industries highly dependent on nature generate 15% of global GDP ($13 trillion), while moderately dependent industries generate 37% ($31 trillion).
Davos, Switzerland, 19 January 2020 – The New Nature Economy Report,
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