Vulnerable People and Places Blog

     You wake up tomorrow, and you have a robot to do everything for you. It makes you breakfast. It cleans your house. It drives you places. You can ask it any question. It can even tell you what to watch! Sounds pretty great right? It kind of is. While WALL-E takes you on a humorous journey, it also provides us with some insight to a world where we let technology consume our lives. WALL-E was made in 2008, but there are some lessons from the movie that are even more applicable today. WALL-E: What Does the Movie Have to Do With Artificial Intelligence? When Earth is too full of trash, humans are forced to live on a gigantic spaceship called the Axiom. While living on the Axiom, everyone has robots wait on them hand and foot. People spend their days sitting in swivel chairs. Staring at screens. Robots spoon-feed them meals and allow them to be completely helpless. Even though the humans in WALL-E have it pretty good, they have become overly dependent on technology. This i...

      Artificial intelligence is starting to play a role in content creation on social media platforms. Hours of filming, editing, and writing captions can now be done in minutes with AI. Whether it’s AI generating videos and captions or editing photos and pitching you ideas, AI is becoming heavily used to create social media content. Apps like TikTok and Instagram have allowed AI to help creators in many different ways. AI has opened many new doors for content creators. Whether you are a small business or an everyday creator who may not have had the funds to pay for an editor, graphic designer, or social media team. Artificial intelligence has allowed people to create content that looks like a professional made it. Many content creators have used AI to gain more followers, get sponsorships, and create opportunities for themselves where they are now able to make a living from social media. Along with the ability to quickly create content, AI allows you to discover pr...

  Artificial intelligence often goes unnoticed. When we ask a question, create an image, use navigation, or save something online, we get results in seconds. Most of us do not see the systems working behind the scenes. AI relies on large data centers packed with computers that handle and store a lot of information.  As AI expands, the need for these centers is rising too. Data centers can create jobs, attract investment, and introduce new technology to communities, but they also use electricity, water, land, and other resources. This is important for Oregon. The state already has data centers, and more could mean new economic opportunities. Still, people in these communities wonder how much energy these centers use and what their long-term environmental impact might be. Rising electricity demand highlights why this topic is important. The International Energy Agency says that data centers worldwide used about 415 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024. They expect this number...

 Data centers promise progress. They power AI, cloud storage, streaming, and many of the online services we use every day. They can also bring investment and jobs into Oregon. In fact, state economic analysis estimates that data centers support thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity across Oregon.  But there is another side of the story that deserves our attention.  Data centers require enormous infrastructure. They need land, electricity, and sometimes large amounts of water. As more facilities are built, communities have to ask an important question: Who receives the benefits, and who is responsible for the costs? This question is especially relevant right here in Oregon. In Hillsboro, the rapid expansion of data centers has created controversy over tax incentives, water and energy use, farmland, and how much control local communities have over development decisions. In June 2026, 1000 Friends of Oregon and other community groups filed a lawsuit ...

           Do you have a favorite book, movie, art piece, or story? When you read this story was it impactful because it had all the required elements of a story? When you saw this painting was it mesmerizing because it was perfect? Maybe so, but it's probably not the elements of the story that resonate with you or the perfect strokes of the brush that captured your attention. It's actually the originality of it.  It was probably something you had never seen before or a book that went so deep within your mind that it changed something inside of you in the process. A story that you still think about to this day.          Stories and art have long been a part of how we as human show our deepest emotions and identity. It helps us understand and connect to one another in a world where we can be so divided. Allowing us to see a different perspective that we otherwise would never experience.           If...

            Ai is rapidly growing every day. Many of us use it for everyday tasks. From asking questions to using, it as a research tool. We are slowly integrating Ai in every part of our lives. We also have companies adopting Ai and using it as a tool for ever day tasks. Eliminating many collaborative meetings and opting for Ai to do the work.             As we continue to incorporate Ai into our world, are we stopping and asking what we are trading for the conveniency? Yes, living can become easier but isn't struggle part of the process?  Think about how people started business before Ai. You wanted to name your business something innovative. Often times you would ponder on this for days even weeks until one day it came to you. Eureka! The perfect name for your business that only YOU could have come up with. Now, finding a name for anything is as easy as putting in a prompt. Five minutes. Bam! You have a l...