Vulnerable People and Places Blog

  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...

Photo by Patrick Hart Written by Patrick Hart In this, part two of I, Unemployed, I will take you through the frontline jobs in the publishing industry and explain how not even seasoned veterans of the trade will retain job security in the coming years . If the corporate desire for rapid profit growth exceeds a humanitarian desire to take time to implement these technologies in an ethical manner to stave off economic disaster, these positions will be at risk. Before that, let me quickly first define what AI models are at their basest root. AI models are programs that utilize artificial intelligence trained on immense amounts of data to analyze data, establish and recognize patterns, and solve queries on their own with minimal to no human interaction. Warehouse Workers and Drivers: The physical pivot point of the publishing business, books need to be moved from one point to another, stored and moved for sale in both a business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) capacity. ...

Photo by Patrick Hart Written by Patrick Hart Think about this for a second, across the breadth of human history, there have been many technological advances that allowed us as a species to flourish beyond life as nomadic tribes, as well as feed our innate propensity toward laziness. The wheel afforded humanity the ability to transport large amounts of goods and ourselves in fractions of the time and effort. Irrigation brought us agriculture, so we could settle and, by proxy, create complex societies, security, and art. The printing press led to the democratization of information, allowing what we know as a formal education to be more accessible to those less well off. And the industrial revolution was the start of our ability to mass produce goods, eventually bringing prices down for mass consumption.  On paper and long after the fact, these advances have been net wins for humanity once we eventually learn how to integrate our workforce in and around them. The assembly line, for i...

Society has rapidly progressed into a new era of technology. Billions of people use the internet, search engines, and artificial intelligence every single day. Yet most people are only concerned with the digital input and output, unaware that every click, scroll, and AI prompt also carries a physical cost. The systems powering our online world do not exist in some invisible space. They exist in massive physical facilities known as data centers, consuming enormous amounts of land, water, and energy. While the benefits of these technologies are experienced globally, their impacts are often felt most heavily at the local level. Although data centers existed long before the rise of artificial intelligence, the rapid expansion of AI and large language models has significantly accelerated their growth. Data centers have become the backbone of modern technology, powering everything from cloud storage and social media platforms to search engines and AI systems. Without them, many of the techno...

    Since 1976 income inequality has exploded both in the United States and globally, with the top 1% of earners increasing their income by 288% in that time while the bottom 50% of earners have seen their income increase by only 18.8%. If we look at the top 0.01% we see their incomes rose 671.8% from 1976 to 2023 (source: https://realtimeinequality.org/ ).