Sage Lenier: “AI brings no benefit to society”

Tech companies continue to promote products with artificial intelligence (AI) but the technology is ‘useless’, unsustainable and has created ‘an existential crisis’ for the sector, says environmental campaigner Sage Lenier.

A speech that stands out at the Web Summit, which brings together the elite of start-ups and investors in new technologies in Lisbon. “AI brings no benefit to society,” asserts the American during an interview with AFP on the sidelines of the summit.

Big bosses were seduced by “useless” products, abandoning the idea that technology must have a fundamental utility, and now they face “an existential crisis”, maintains the one who became known in 2018, at age 19, when she created a course at the University of Berkeley (California), entitled “Solutions for a Just and Sustainable Future,” in which hundreds of students enrolled. Sage Lenier has since founded an association on the same theme (“Sustainable & Just Future”) and hopes to produce a documentary series from it.

“Some of you can be considered to be the architects, directly responsible, of the ecological crisis,” she told entrepreneurs last year during her speech at the Web Summit. She had pleaded for the circular economy, which consists of promoting recycling and reuse, to be at the heart of the approach of “tech” bosses, whose products often end up in the trash, fueling waste.

A call little heard since the giants Microsoft, Google and others continue to produce an uninterrupted flow of products doped with AI, an extremely energy-intensive technology, which seems to jeopardize the achievement of their carbon neutrality objectives. To meet their growing electricity needs, particularly those of their data storage centers, these behemoths are turning more and more to nuclear power.

Artificial intelligence “is terrible for the planet. This is terrible for the populations who live where data centers are located. It’s just a waste of (carbon) emissions,” criticizes Sage Lenier. The “tech” sector is however “the only industry, at least in America, which has tried for years to present itself as green, clean and pro-future,” according to the activist. And to recall that Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, “has written several books on climate change”.

The tech titans hold on to this image and have until now managed to avoid attention and controversy over the ecological issues that the fashion industry or the automobile sector may experience, according to Sage Lenier. “But as soon as they saw the opportunities with AI to increase shareholder profits, they all went for it,” she says.

With the rise of artificial intelligence, combined with the impact of other industries, Sage Lenier foresees a bleak future. “The situation will deteriorate very quickly. The food chain will break. We will witness mass malnutrition, even mass famine,” she warns. The electricity network should also give way. “You can’t have cars for the long term. It doesn’t matter if they are electric or not. They are not sustainable. “We cannot continue to produce 80 billion items of clothing per year in a low-carbon future,” continues the young woman.