A.I.’s Effects on Creativity in Education

 

I am a big fan of technology. I’ve blissfully given over my spatial reasoning to Google Maps. I use artificial intelligence to chase down articles, do research, fix my grammar mistakes and whip up last-minute school-night recipes.

But I’ve recently drawn a sharp line in the sand: no A.I. for writing. I’m not talking about expense reports or routine emails. I mean actual writing, and the creative brainstorming that precedes it to explore different perspectives or develop novel insights. Increasingly, many people I talk to — from students to teachers to peers — tell me that they think it’s OK to use A.I. chatbots for brainstorming as long as they do the “real work” of writing.

But this misunderstands something critical: Brainstorming is the work that’s fundamental to writing. As a researcher studying A.I.’s effects on education, I have concluded that these tools only superficially improve writing. The bigger and more alarming impact they have is to constrict our full range of thoughts and our ability to generate original and useful ideas — what we call creative thinking.

This seems to be especially true for students. A.I.’s smooth sentences, elegant transitions and rich vocabulary give the illusion of expansive creativity and individuality. But the underlying ideas often converge into a few homogenized categories.

The erosion of creative thinking means young people will struggle to navigate uncertainty. Workers will strain to adapt to a shifting labor market. And society will miss out on the new ideas that can solve complex problems and enhance lives.

For the past eight years, the Georgetown University neuroscientist Adam Green has been leading a national research team tracking the range of novel ideas that college-bound high school students present in their application essays, before and after the introduction of ChatGPT.

In one study, he and his team examined personal statements from more than 370,000 students, and found that after ChatGPT became available, their essays suddenly used diverse and colorful language, but lacked truly creative ideas. And the linguistic coverup worked; post-ChatGPT essays were rated as more “creative” by human judges, even if the substance of the essays trod familiar territory.

In a separate study, the team found that human-written essays offered up to eight times more new ideas than those produced by A.I.

Another experiment run by a different research team compared short stories written by humans to those written with A.I. assistance. As with the student essays in Dr. Green’s study, A.I.-assisted works had more interesting vocabulary and were rated more enjoyable to read, but the underlying story lines were more homogeneous. Distinctive and offbeat ideas — with surprising characters or unusual settings — are often shunted to the side when A.I. is involved.

For the first time in human history, we have a technology that can generate words separately from the thoughts they represent. When a chatbot writes, it is predicting the next word that is most likely to make a “good” sentence or essay, based on the text it’s been trained on. It can identify sophisticated and creative word patterns independently of whether the underlying ideas represent something new.

When teenagers write their own essays, the work reflects their thoughts and personalities, their attempts to make meaning of their experiences. When we search for words, we are sifting through the same brain networks that form connections between ideas. A student who writes, “I’ll always think of learning to swim when I see a kite flying,” is connecting unique personal experiences in her life, which until recently was a clear signal of truly creative thinking.

Another way A.I. interaction can narrow ideas is through the power of suggestion. Once a chatbot suggests a direction, humans tend to lock in on it. The conversational nature of A.I. can make it difficult to distinguish where the user’s thinking ends and the bot’s begins, making it effortless for people to adopt A.I.-generated perspectives as their own.

It’s easy to see how an impressionable teenager could forgo writing the unconventional essay — about, say, what it feels like to play jazz or cook with your grandmother — in favor of whatever A.I. suggests.

Even more problematic, Dr. Green’s research shows that A.I. has the largest homogenizing impact on students who are farthest from the mean and have unique perspectives, including neurodivergent students and those from racial and linguistic minorities.

This is not to say that A.I. can never support human creativity. Workers with deep knowledge of their craft can use A.I. to streamline technical or administrative tasks in order to focus on the parts of their jobs where originality lives — including teachers having more time to devise engaging lessons and illustrators devoting more attention to developing visual concepts. A.I. gives specialists the time they need to do what humans do best: brainstorming ideas to creatively solve problems.

Our species’ ability to come up with unexpected and original ideas is something to protect and nurture. That’s especially true for today’s adolescents. A world where creative thinking flourishes is a world that has a better chance to weather the changes that A.I. will bring.

Rebecca Winthrop is the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and led its global task force on A.I. and education.

NY Times

 

Boomers

 

We are often called “the elderly,” but that quiet label hides a truth most people rarely pause to consider we are the last living witnesses of a world that no longer exists.

If you look closely, you might notice gray hair, slower steps, or the quiet patience that time alone can teach. But if you truly listen to our stories, you will discover something far more extraordinary. We are not simply older people moving through the final chapters of life.

We are the survivors of one of the most breathtaking transformations in human history — a generation that walked from the slow, deliberate rhythm of an analog world into the dazzling speed of a digital one without ever losing our sense of humanity along the way. Our journey began in a very different place.

Many of us were born in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, when the scars of World War II were still fresh across Europe and Asia and the world was slowly learning how to hope again. Cities rose from rubble. Families rebuilt lives after years of uncertainty. Childhood unfolded in ways that would feel almost unrecognizable to younger generations today.

Our [games and] toys were simple: marbles played in dusty yards, [baseball played on city streets, pitching pennies on sidewalks, playing tag and ringolevio], hopscotch drawn on cracked sidewalks, checkers and cards gathered around kitchen tables while the smell of dinner filled the house. When the streetlights flickered on in the evening, it was the universal signal that childhood adventures were over for the day, and it was time to go home.

There were no smartphones, no streaming videos, no endless scroll of digital distractions. Instead, we built our memories in the real world — with scraped knees, laughter echoing down neighborhood streets, and friendships that formed face to face, without the mediation of screens.

Music became one of the defining soundtracks of our youth. The 1960s and 1970s arrived like a wave of color and rebellion. We watched culture shift around us: [carried by folk music written by Dylan, Simon, Prine and Mitchell...] and by electric guitars and voices that dared to question the world.

For many of us, gatherings like the legendary Woodstock Festival of 1969 symbolized something powerful: the belief that peace, music, and community could reshape the future. Hundreds of thousands of young people stood together in muddy fields listening to artists who poured raw emotion into towering speakers known as the Wall of Sound. Those concerts were not merely entertainment; they were moments when strangers felt like a single generation singing the same hope under an open sky. [Something even more powerful, hundreds of thousands of people also protested the U.S. government's war in Vietnam].  

Education looked different then, too. Our notebooks were filled with handwritten notes carefully copied from chalkboards. Research required patience, long hours in libraries, and stacks of heavy books rather than a quick internet search. We learned to slow down and think through ideas because information did not arrive instantly. Mistakes were corrected with erasers and ink, not with the click of a delete button.

Love carried a different rhythm as well. We fell in love while vinyl records spun on turntables, [8-track tapes], and cassette tapes clicked softly inside plastic players. Music became the background to first dances, long conversations, and dreams about the future. Those relationships grew into marriages, families, and lives built step by step through the 1980s and 1990s — decades that saw technology begin to reshape the world around us.

Yet nothing compares to the bridge our generation has crossed. We are the only generation to have experienced an entirely analog childhood and a fully digital adulthood.

We remember waiting days — or sometimes weeks — for handwritten letters to arrive in the mail. We remember rotary telephones and party lines where neighbors could accidentally overhear conversations. Communication required patience and anticipation. Today, we can see the face of a loved one across the ocean instantly on a screen small enough to fit in a pocket.

The world changed in ways few could have imagined. We watched humanity land on the Moon in 1969, a moment when millions of people sat in living rooms staring at black-and-white televisions as Neil Armstrong took humanity’s first steps on another world.

We saw the rise of personal computers, the birth of the internet, and eventually the arrival of smartphones that placed entire libraries of knowledge in our hands. Machines that once filled entire rooms now exist on devices lighter than a paperback book. We moved from punch cards and mechanical tools to artificial intelligence and global networks connecting billions of people instantly. And through every shift, we adapted.

Our bodies carry the marks of the times we lived through as well. We grew up during fears of polio and tuberculosis, illnesses that once terrified entire communities before vaccines helped bring them under control. We witnessed the global challenges of pandemics and health crises across decades, including the recent silence and uncertainty of COVID-19, which reminded the world that resilience is still required in every generation.

Science itself transformed before our eyes. We saw the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, the decoding of the human genome at the turn of the century, and the early steps into gene therapy and advanced medicine. Transportation evolved from simple bicycles and steam engines to hybrid vehicles and electric cars gliding almost silently through city streets.

Few generations have witnessed such sweeping change. And yet, despite everything that evolved around us, certain things remain unchanged. We still understand the joy of a cold glass bottle of lemonade on a hot afternoon. We still remember the taste of vegetables picked straight from a garden. We still know the value of a long conversation that unfolds slowly without a keyboard or screen interrupting it.

Our memories stretch across decades. We have celebrated births, mourned losses, watched friends depart, and carried their stories forward. Those of us who remain share something rare: the experience of standing at the crossroads of history, holding memories from a world that younger generations know only through photographs and stories.

But we are not relics. We are living bridges. Our perspective reminds the modern world that progress does not have to erase wisdom. The speed of technology does not have to replace patience, kindness, or reflection. We remember what life felt like before everything moved so fast — and that memory carries quiet lessons worth sharing.

So, when someone calls us “elderly,” we can smile. Because behind that word lies something extraordinary. We are the generation that crossed two centuries, witnessed eight decades of transformation, and walked from the age of handwritten letters to the era of artificial intelligence.

What a life we have lived. What a remarkable story we continue to carry. And if you belong to this generation, take a moment today to look in the mirror and recognize something powerful.

You are not simply growing older. You are living history. You are part of a generation that will always remain one of a kind. And perhaps, in the quietest and most meaningful way, you are becoming legendary."

-David Wyles

A Message to All Republicans

He pardoned 1,600 violent criminals. You said nothing. He bulldozed the East Wing. You said nothing. He interfered with the release of the Epstein files. You said nothing. He took over the Kennedy Center and renamed it after himself. You said nothing. He accepted a $400 million airplane as a personal gift. You said nothing. He threatened Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. You said nothing. He tariffed just about everyone but Russia, causing inflation and instability worldwide. You said nothing. He attacked a nation during mediated negotiations. You said nothing. His ill-conceived war killed 175 children on day one. You said nothing. He alienated and insulted our allies. You said nothing. His ICE Army terrorized and murdered U.S. citizens. You said nothing. He committed murder on the high seas. You said nothing. He co-opted the Justice Department and directed it to prosecute his political enemies. You said nothing. It's time to [take action]!   -Author Unknown

Let us all continue to rebel against his autocratic abuse of presidential power, his felonious behavior, his constitutional ignorance, his obstruction of justice and concealment, his lawless demagoguery, his pathological narcissism, his grandiose delusions, his anti-social personality disorder, his malignant arrogance, his moral relativism, his white nationalism, his perfidious nationalism, his hateful racism, his infectious nihilism, his outrageous iconoclasm, his ruthless competition, his puerile dereliction, his embarrassing stupidity, his provocative transgressions, his mocking disrespect, his impetuous vulgarity, his sexual predation; his belligerent intimidation, his incessant lying, his conspiratorial gaslighting, his obsessive vindictiveness, his hypocritical cowardice, his compulsive xenophobia, his callous misogyny, his insufferable bigotry, his disgusting buffoonery, his histrionic rallying, his sociopathic bullying, seditious behavior and dangerous fascism... -Glen Brown

 

"Implement the 25th Amendment"

 

We should not be surprised that Donald Trump is mentally and emotionally imploding under the cumulative effect of plunging poll numbers, his disastrous Iran war (which constantly humiliates him as both Iran and Israel repeatedly defy his desperate attempts to control them and his phony prognostications of progress in peace talks), and an increasingly irritable Senate Republican caucus.

Trump recently suffered from supporters’ unraveling and/or disaffection (e.g. Trump’s Paramount/CBS allies’ embarrassing implosion, the defection of white working-class and male voters, another insult to faith groups reminded of white Christian nationalists’ religious bigotry), repeated legal defeats, and multiple legislative losses unprecedented for a president with majorities in both houses (e.g. a House vote to fund Ukraine, passage of the War Powers Act resolution, opposition to Trump’s sleazy slush fund, collapse of FISA Section 702 reauthorization because of outrage over the appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence).

When you throw in the indignity of seeing his name physically scraped off the Kennedy Center building, the cancellation of musical has-beens from his cheesy, self-referential 250 Freedom bash, and the entirely expected torrent of boos from Knicks fans, you have the pathological narcissist’s worst nightmare: public humiliation. (Historian and fascism expert Ruth Ben Ghiat has explained that when their autocracies unravel, strongmen’s overwhelming fear of humiliation and loss of power compels them to lash out, grab more tightly to power, and make increasingly rash decisions in the vain hope of fending off decline.)

Certainly, Trump’s mental and physical disintegration has been on display for many years. However, it is easy to lose track of the velocity of Trump’s decompensation.

As a group of 36 mental health professionals recently explained in a stinging written statement, Trump’s outbursts are not “momentary lapses nor political theater”; they instead “reflect a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline.” And this was before Trump’s explosion on Meet the Press, among the most cringeworthy presidential media appearances ever.

However, you do not have to be a medical professional to conclude Trump is getting much worse much more quickly. We should not avert our eyes from the indisputable evidence that Trump cannot cope with reality. When confronted with indisputable facts, he lashes out and retreats into denial. (As the New York Times reported, “President Trump, who campaigned on a central promise to keep the United States out of overseas wars, denied in an interview aired on Sunday that he’d ever made the pledge.”)

The “big blubbery baby man, enraged at his ebbing power” provided a disturbing image in his MTP interview, Democratic pollster and analyst Simon Rosenberg aptly noted, of an “an old, addled man clearly in profound decline.” 

His bloated, rage-filled, disheveled appearance and inability to engage rationally with anyone outside his cult tempt one to look away. Denial is natural when you fear nothing can be done to stave off an impending disaster.

But now is precisely the time to demand a robust debate in public, in Congress, and on the midterm campaign trail about the gravity of leaving a patently unfit, raving lunatic in the Oval Office. In light of the grave danger Trump poses, pro-democracy forces must educate the public, compel legacy media to cover his breakdown as vigorously and consistently as they did Joe Biden’s health after his 2024 debate, and pressure Republicans to remove or at least restrain him.

Democrats do not control Congress, although they do occasionally take charge of the House through discharge petitions. Nevertheless, they have successfully used so-called shadow hearings to expose urgent issues (e.g., ICE brutality). A serious, sober subcommittee (perhaps drawn from both the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee) with professional staff should conduct methodical public hearings and assemble a comprehensive report documenting Trump’s deterioration. 

In the laying out the circumstances and frequency of his mental/emotional breakdowns, the public should receive ample evidence that Trump’s increasingly severe meltdowns are not a function of simple aging or odd personality quirks (an absurd if not delusional interpretation of his conduct) but of dangerous mental and emotional dysfunction.

At the end of the process, Democrats (and any patriotic Republicans inclined to prevent grave harm to the country) should present a series of specific, feasible recommendations, including legislation to compel the release of all presidential medical records and to require independent medical evaluation of presidents and vice presidents. 

They should spell out rules to implement the 25^th Amendment. They also should make clear that once they have subpoena power after the midterms, they will supplement findings by calling witnesses to testify under oath as to his observable behavior. If Republicans defend his indefensible conduct and block common-sense measures, they will take on full responsibility for the wreckage that ensues from sheltering an unhinged, unwell president.

Next, Democrats must undertake a focused and robust push to present their findings to the press and the voters. If the president’s emotional and mental competency is not the most compelling issue of the moment, it is hard to imagine what would be. Republican House and Senate candidates need to be put on the spot in every public encounter: Do they think the president is of sound mind? What do they intend to do to, for example, protect nuclear codes? Why shouldn’t the public have full visibility into the health of a president whose conduct has been so obviously aberrant? 

Democrats should pound away at the issue in floor speeches, media spots, op-eds, and public forums. If it were not obvious before, leaving Trump in power surrounded by spineless yes men unwilling to challenge him and a MAGA Congress that abets his increasingly erratic conduct and flights from reality is a recipe for disaster — and the most persuasive reason to elect substantial Democratic majorities in both houses. 

Nothing is more urgent to the survival of our democracy, national security, and collective well-being than to begin now to convince voters that stringent guardrails (if not, removal by 25^th Amendment or impeachment) are required to shield the United States from further harm. Given the public’s rising disgust with Trump and his propensity to humiliate himself on a near daily basis, voters might well become convinced that extraordinary action is required to defuse the ticking time bomb in the White House.

 -Jennifer Rubin, Contrarian

Donald Trump and Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker in Wisconsin. (White House photo)

glen brown: Why Donald J. Trump Is a Threat to Our Democracy and Unfit to be President of the United States of America by Glen Brown

"The worst is watching the children"

NEWARK, N.J. — The worst is not the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and private contractors, wielding baseball bats and batons, who flood the parking lot at the end of their shifts and unleash on protesters outside the gates the sadism practiced on those incarcerated inside Delaney Hall.

The worst is not the tear gas, the tasers, the pepper spray or the dozens of arrests.

The worst is not the beatings and the riot shields, raised above the heads of New Jersey State Police and Newark police and brought down swiftly on bodies, leaving severe lacerations.

The worst is watching the children.

The ones heaving and sobbing as they leave Delaney Hall, saying goodbye to their mothers, fathers, sisters or brothers who took them to school, who cheered them on at their soccer games, who told them they are beautiful and talented, who woke up before dawn to work menial jobs so they could have a future, who love them in a world where love is a diminishing commodity.

I am seated against a cyclone fence a block from Delaney Hall, New Jersey’s largest ICE jail, with a protester who goes by the name of Basher. He is 41. He has a thick black beard. His nails are dirty. His hands are scarred from clashing with police. His head is wrapped in a green keffiyeh. The stench of the sprawling Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission treatment plant across the street saturates the air. When it comes to the children, the ones ripped from their parents by a nation that is institutionalizing cruelty, even Basher must catch his breath and stop. The scenes are too much to bear.

The savagery at Delaney Hall is the warm-up act. The goons, the ones who attack those demonized on the inside of the ICE jail and those demonized on the streets outside of it, are in training for the rest of us. Delaney Hall, run by a private prison company — The GEO Group — is the template for a world where we will be stripped of our rights; routinely jailed and tortured; denied adequate medical care; fed rancid, expired and moldy food infested with worms and maggots; forced to drink contaminated water and breathe polluted air; and work for poverty wages — in the case of those inside Delaney Hall, a dollar a day.

Some 300 of the roughly 600 people detained at Delaney Hall — which includes teenagers, the elderly and pregnant women — began a hunger and labor strike on May 22.

ICE and GEO Group guards reacted as you would expect. They beat the strikers. They seal vents and toss tear gas and pepper spray into cells. They place suspected leaders of the strike in handcuffs and force them out of the facility to unknown locations, or isolate them, in “punishment units.” They manipulate the heating and cooling systems so prisoners endure extreme heat or cold. They cut telephone and internet access and suspend visitation rights. They sexually harass women.

On May 31, 56 of those held inside Delaney Hall issued their fourth public letter. It was handwritten in Spanish on ruled paper: “The conditions in this prison are not fit for human beings over such a long period of time: medical neglect, water unfit for consumption, food that is past its expiration date and in poor condition, bathrooms that are unusable, and ventilation systems that have never been maintained and because of this, we are constantly sick,” the latest letter reads. “We demand freedom, a fair trial, and for our rights to be respected. S.O.S.”

On July 24, last year, at around 6:45 a.m., ICE vehicles blocked a van carrying 15 Guatemalan workers, three blocks from my house. I went to see the men at the ICE jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey, because I speak Spanish and because their families, terrified of being targeted, could not. The men told me they were threatened with lengthy prison sentences, followed by certain deportation, if they did not sign papers agreeing to their immediate deportation. They signed. It was my job to inform their families they would not be coming home.

A Guardian analysis of government records found that during the first seven months of Trump’s second term, the parents of at least 27,000 children — 12,000 of whom had U.S. citizenship — were arrested.

These men were my neighbors. Their children attend high school with my children. The kidnapping of parents — often at work or at immigration hearings and ICE check-in appointments — not only traumatizes the children of these families, but the entire community. Every child in the high school wonders if their parents will also one day be seized and disappear. Every child wonders how this cruelty can be inflicted on their friends. Every child wonders what kind of country we live in.

The state and the media organs that act as its echo chamber are doing their best to convince the public that those locked up in Delaney Hall are “criminals,” “the worst of the worst.”

But a review of ICE data by Austin Kocher — an assistant research professor at Syracuse University and an immigration data and policy expert — exposes the lie. Kocher found that 88 percent of immigrants detained at Delaney Hall have no criminal conviction and more than 70 percent have no criminal history. Those with criminal convictions almost universally committed low-level offenses.

The rogue paramilitary forces that pour daily out of the gates of Delaney Hall are unaccountable. They ignore the law. They are the Satanic foundation of our emergent police state. The terror they inflict on those in this small patch of Newark will soon be inflicted on all of us.

New Jersey Senator Andy Kim — who was pepper-sprayed outside Delaney Hall by ICE agents — and Governor Mikie Sherrill were denied entry into the facility. Kim, after an appeal to the Director of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, was eventually given a lightning tour, but forbidden to speak to any detainees. City and state health inspectors have also been blocked from fully accessing the ICE jail.

The message is clear: We will carry out any abuse with immunity.

On Saturday afternoon, after about a dozen protestors blocked cars from driving out of the facility, ICE agents, wearing combat gear and face coverings, charged the protesters with pepper-ball guns, mace and tasers.

“Move back! Get back!” they shouted as they unleashed clouds of pepper spray. Cars leaving the facility struck at least one protester.

By around 10:00 p.m., some 100 protestors had set up a barricade of barrels filled with sand to block the facility’s exits and entrances. The blockade saw a huge influx of ICE agents, GEO Group guards and Newark police push the protestors several hundred yards down the street.

Police announced a ban on protesters wearing protective gear, including respirators and goggles, although Delaney Hall is located in an industrial area with extensive air and water contamination known as “Chemical Corridor.”

The battle at Delaney Hall is not over. It is a battle not only for justice, for the rights of our neighbors, for a world where all are treated with dignity and respect, for children who should never be separated from their fathers and mothers, but a battle to save our country from galloping fascism. Join it now. Soon it may be too late.

The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

"He crushed his lapel mic underfoot on his way out"

“The election was rigged, it was a dirty election and it’s happening again right now in California,” he said, referring to primaries for mayoral and gubernatorial elections in the state, where votes are still being counted.

California sends every registered voter a mail ballot and accepts ballots postmarked on or before election day that arrive within a week. That often leads to slower vote counts. Republicans have long alleged wrongdoing, as votes for Democratic candidates often surge past those for GOP opponents after late-arriving ballots are counted.

“They’re cheating on the election,” Trump claimed. Pressed for evidence, Trump argued that “all I have to do is look ... and I listen to people and let’s see what happens.”

“Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they’re nowhere close to picking a winner?” he said. “They’re crooked, just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked and ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked.”

Welker attempted to press Trump for evidence to back up his claims, which he did not provide, and redirect Trump to a question about acting AG Blanche several times before the president pulled the plug on the interview and stormed off the set.

“Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough, thank you, darling, have a good time,” the president said as he crushed his lapel mic underfoot on his way out.

 -Meet the Press

Data Centers: Far Bigger Disasters Than You Even Thought

This week in the Anthropocene

The road is dusty and trash strewn. My friend and collaborator Colby Groves is hanging out the car window as I drive, gazing at a patchwork of solar panels lined up behind a chain-link fence. “This has to be it,” declares Colby, balancing a large camera on his lap, hoping it doesn’t bounce off as we traverse a series of bumps and divots.

We are in this land of scorching sun and heat, searching for a large Amazon solar installation in rural San Bernardino County, California. This is the home of the endangered desert tortoise and Joshua trees, but more recently, it’s become a plaything for greedy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

In 2024, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon connected its Baldy Mesa solar-and-storage project, which helps to power the company’s nearby data centers, to the electrical grid, earning accolades for its use of renewable energy. It’s the first of its kind in California. Despite its gargantuan size, the project faced very little opposition, as is often the case with such “green” projects.

As we step out of the car, we immediately hear the loud hum of a football-field’s worth of batteries, powered by solar panels that surround us in every direction. The entire setup is connected to the grid by towering transmission lines. Altogether, this sprawling array covers 1,500 acres of Mojave Desert habitat, almost twice the size of New York City’s Central Park.

Baldy Mesa’s impact on this delicate ecology is stark and tangible. Where Joshua trees once stood, Lego-like blocks of batteries the size of shipping containers now buzz and radiate heat. Where coyotes once scampered and desert tortoises burrowed, solar panels now blanket the landscape. Amazon avoided controversy by relocating 153 doomed Joshua trees, but the fact remains, there’s not a single Joshua tree where these photovoltaic panels now sit.

This particular Amazon Web Services (AWS) facility is an AI-driven machine-learning operation capable of analyzing 33 billion data points each year. That’s over 90 million data points a day. They claim it will allow their batteries to run more efficiently, while making you a better, wiser consumer of Amazon’s products and services.

As far as corporate marketing gimmicks go, this sure sounds nice. Yet, as I stand in the middle of Amazon’s solar farm, I can’t help but wonder what this desert must have been like before they decided it was better suited to powering AI programs. What was it like out here when the soil could still sequester carbon? Building on these lands has eliminated its ability to absorb fossil-fuel pollution. These solar panels are actually hurting the climate, not helping it out.

Even though this behemoth runs on renewable energy, nothing about it feels eco-friendly. Like so much of this AI-driven madness, there is a very post-apocalyptic aura to it all, made worse by the fact that Jeff Bezos is reaping the spoils. “Wow, look at that.” Colby points to a fence set up to protect the battery installation. The gate is wide open.

Someone more inclined to commit sabotage would have no difficulty gaining access. But we aren’t here for data center mischief. Colby sets up his tripod to shoot footage to accompany Bad Energy, my forthcoming book exploring the downside of the so-called green energy transition.

Few people will ever make their way to this remote spot in the Mojave to witness firsthand what Amazon has wrought. Aerial photographs obscure the reality of what it’s like on the ground amid the AI upheaval being thrust upon us without our consent. And, despite my many misgivings, this whole monstrosity is allegedly one of the better ones. Most new data centers aren’t powered by renewables but by fossil fuels.

Unless you’ve been slithering under a rock for the last few years (I empathize!), you know data centers are bad news.

-They suck up water. 17.4 billion gallons annually in the US.

-They burn electricity. 176 terawatt-hours (4% of all US energy use) yearly. Globally, they use 415 terawatt-hours, which is more than that of only 10 countries.

-They are creating heat islands. In some cases, warming the land around them by 16 degrees Fahrenheit.

-They eat up land. The average data center is the equivalent of 450 football fields.

-They aren’t long-term job producers. Even the Wall Street Journal calls data centers a “job-creation bust.” And of course, they are the beating heart of the AI revolution, which is encroaching on every aspect of our lives.

But really, how bad are these damn things? After all, they aren’t a new invention; they’ve been around since the dawn of the computer age. Yet, something is quantitatively different about what’s happening. At the current pace, data centers globally will require $1 trillion in annual infrastructure investment by the end of the decade.

It helps to put all of this in numbers. In the United States, there are between 1,500 and 1,600 data centers in the planning or construction phase, with over 4,000 already operating. A Pew study estimates that 67% of these new plants are coming to rural America, where 87% of existing centers currently operate in urban zones.

There are 754 data centers planned in the South. 277 in the West. 419 in the Midwest and 106 in the Northeast. Right now, Pew has shown 38% of Americans live within 5 miles of a data center.

Globally, there are 11,000+ data centers, and economies of scale are expected to dominate. This means the footprint of future data centers will matter more than the number of data centers being built. The energy required for this growth, as the Southern Environmental Law Center predicts, will supercharge climate chaos.

This is because many of these new plants use natural gas to generate power. Natural gas, while not as dirty as coal, releases methane, which, in the short term, is even more harmful than carbon dioxide. Gas plants also emit carbon. Lots of it. A study released in April predicted that just three of Microsoft’s AI-powered, methane-gas-powered data center projects will double the company’s carbon footprint and spew large amounts of pollution.

Another paper from researchers at Cornell predicts that up to 44 million metric tons of CO2 will be emitted by decade’s end if operators continue to rely on natural gas to power their data centers. As Grist reports, that’s like adding 10 million new vehicles on the road. The UN just published a study stating that by 2030, data centers will account for 3% of the world’s total energy use, a total of 935 terawatt-hours of electricity, emitting 440 million tons of carbon dioxide

This week, Columbia Riverkeeper (a fantastic org that deserves your support) dropped a startling report on what planned data centers will do in their corner of the Pacific Northwest. The study exposes how fossil fuel companies, utilities, and Big Tech are colluding to use the surge in data center development to expand gas-fired power plants and more pipelines.

“After years of progress toward achieving our region’s climate goals, we’re suddenly a potential new market for the fossil fuel industry,” says my friend Audrey Leonard, a staff attorney for Columbia Riverkeeper. “Cloaked under a shroud of secrecy, Big Tech opened the window, and now the gas industry is poised to seize an opportunity to build.”

This is a microcosm of what is happening nationwide. Data centers, fueled by massive capital investments in AI, will make it even harder to reduce the country’s contribution to climate chaos.

Then there’s the issue of water. A crowdsourced map compiled by Erin Brockovich shows that many data centers in the United States are operating in areas experiencing extreme drought. This isn’t good news where water conservation is needed, which may soon be much of the country. As mentioned above, data centers in the US, by one estimate, directly consumed 17.4 billion gallons of water per year. As more of these centers get built, that amount is expected to grow to 38-73 billion gallons annually. That’s a lot of water, more than the cities of Seattle or San Francisco use in an entire year.

-Joshua Frank, CounterPunch