In watching the current obsession with AI, I felt that it’s time to finally share my thoughts about using AI from a Permaculture perspective.

Spoiler: I don’t like it. So why post a video at all? Does it really matter if you use AI or not? What does it have to do with Permaculture?

From Techno-Optimist into… well, I believe in trees.

People who met me in the past few years may be surprised to know that I was once very into technology. I was a computer nerd and coded my first game somewhere around 3rd grade.

When I started waking up to the ways we were wrecking our environment and harming each other, I was a big believer that green technology could get us to a better world.

I imagined a world where everything was powered by solar and wind. I believed the claims that automation technology would be used to give us all a 20-hour work week while renewable energy would remove the need for any fossil fuels. I thought we’d be entering a world of shared material abundance coupled with care for the planet.

As an activist in my early twenties, I fought pretty hard for that world. Along with renewable energy, I studied machine learning, promoted open source, and even coded a rudimentary AI to use as a game engine. I programmed microcontrollers that I thought could make useful gardening hardware. I supported apps that helped us barter or freecycle things we needed instead of buying more. I was a part of that early 2000s techno-optimism where we hadn’t yet seen the damage social media and smartphones could do.

Now, as a Permaculture teacher in my forties and writing from the 2020s, I see things very differently.

You can watch the video to understand more of why I don’t think AI has a place in Permaculture, and if you want to learn more, I’m including some writing about AI below.

What do you think? Share a comment. I’m open to sincere discussion on this topic.

Resources

Feel free to copy and use this logo:

AI’s Ecological Impact

• Environmental impact of AI data centers – PBS – and another from MIT
• Wikipedia’s article on it

AI’s financial ridiculousness and why it may destroy the economy

• Why AI is likely the biggest financial bubble we’ve ever had (technical reading) – Ed Zitron

Why AI isn’t really giving us the productivity increase we might think it is

• How AI coding tools actually make users less productive (even as they think they’re working better)
• 95% percent of companies investing in AI are not actually making money from doing so