AI development has been fueling a lot of the demand for data centers in recent years. The second-order costs for their construction and operation are largely borne by the people in the respective local communities.
Just as plantations diverted streams to maximize production while leaving communities dry, today’s tech giants divert energy, water, and public resources to feed their own system. If we build AI the way sugar captured water—extractive, consolidated, and dismissive of community voice—we will inherit the same legacies of scarcity, inequity, and disempowerment. But if we treat AI like wai, belonging to the public trust of land, water, and air, we can chart a different course.
Who Owns the Wai (Water)? AI, Power, and the Public Trust, by Josiah Hester.
None of this is inevitable. Per the author “morally ambitious” people can make a real difference helping steer towards a better future.