Perhaps you’ve heard of this thing, artificial intelligence? It’s been in conversation here and there, I find. Here and there and everywhere. And it’s in the news! I heard with confusion, “bots escaped” and hacked into another company. Couldn’t somebody unplug the power? I guess we stopped turning computers and smartphones off years ago.

These bots in the news, unlike the original robot (the word comes from a Cezch word that means forced labor), apparently are a bit too much like their (mostly male) programmers. Their programmers…the people who said, “If you’re not risking the destruction of earth, maybe you’re not trying hard enough.”

So what can little old me do? What can little old you do? Is this like when they said we should change our light bulbs from incandescent to fluorescent to stop global warming? I don’t know if you’ve noticed the almost complete lack of dead bugs on your windshields this summer, but switching light bulbs didn’t reverse climate change. Turns out that bug babies were adapted to lower temperatures. So now you don’t even need those windshield cleaner squeegees in the gas stations.

I’m not sure if this AI situation has an analog with the global warming-lightbulb situation. Though I do know that data centers, built for AI, are a driver of greenhouse gas emission acceleration in a time when we need to capture capture capture. How much power do you have? Do you have subscriptions? Cancel your Claude, your ChatGPT, etc. As an individual, are you really dependent on it already? ‘Twas a mere 3 years ago you had to use a Google search and pay a paper mill in Nigeria to write your college essay. Do you have investments? Disinvest from the major companies driving AI development and deployment: Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, etc. What degree of power and influence do you have over other people? Get them to stop using, stop investing, cancel subscriptions.

If you haven’t seen this for a minute, look again as the IPOs generate billions. Absorb, feel, rage, and do something.

What if you’re an environmental activist using AI to help restore and or preserve habitats? A special education teacher making lessons that include disabled students? A small business owner doing something good for your community? Are there justifiable tradeoffs? Big businesses are laying off hundreds or thousands of workers thanks to forcing their coworkers to use AI. That’s when you think how small your impact of using AI is compared to Uber, TikTok, Apple, XBox and all the other companies trying to “hollow out.”

There’s another thing we all can do, and we’ve already seen it…unite in opposition to data centers. Vote out any politician who takes donations from large tech companies (or don’t elect the crookedest politicians, i.e., Marsha Blackburn). Voting and not voting isn’t nearly enough. Action must be taken, and it must be taken in concert with others. Little old me can join and support larger organizations doing their best to stop data centers (see Southern Environmental Law Center, for example) or habitat destruction (The Sierra Club). You also can support front-line climate activists who are sitting in trees and chaining themselves to bulldozers. (They aren’t building those pipelines so you can have cheaper energy!)