Elemental Ethics for AI: Mobilising Water in Data Centres and Lithium Activism in Chile

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• Dr Sebastian Lehuede
• Wednesday 25 October 2023, 17:00-18:30
• S1.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Anusha Arumugam.

We are delighted to invite you to Dr Sebastián Lehuedé’s talk on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and environmental activism. Sebastián was CGHR ’s Postdoctoral Scholar from 2021 to 2023, before he succeeded in being appointed to a Lectureship in Ethics, AI and Society in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. This talk stems from theoretical explorations and empirical fieldwork he conducted during his time at CGHR . This hybrid session will be moderated by CGHR Co-Director Dr Sharath Srinivasan.

ABSTRACT

Research and activism have increasingly denounced the problematic environmental record of the infrastructure and value chain underpinning Artificial Intelligence (AI). Water-intensive data centres, mineral extraction and e-waste dumping are incontrovertibly part of AI’s footprint. In this talk, Sebastián turns to areas affected by AI-fuelled environmental harm and identifies an emerging form of activism, which he terms ‘elemental ethics’. Elemental ethics interrogates AI’s problematic relationship with the elements that make up the world (such as water), critiques the undermining of local and ancestral approaches to nature and unearths the vital and quotidian harms engendered by so-called ‘intelligent’ systems.

While this ethics is emerging from grassroots and Indigenous groups, it also connects with discussions within environmental philosophy on the capacity of elemental thought to prompt practical action. In empirical terms, this talk looks at two groups in Chile centring water in their struggle against a Google data centre project in Santiago and lithium extraction (used for rechargeable batteries) in Lickan Antay Indigenous territory, Atacama Desert. As Sebastián shows, elemental ethics expands ‘counting carbon’ approaches to sustainable AI and questions whose lived experience counts in debates about extinction scenarios brought about by AI.

You are welcomed to join us for drinks post-event at the Atrium of the Alison Richard Building.

This talk is part of the Centre of Governance and Human Rights Events series.

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