Gerry McGovern"Beyond energy and water, AI rests on a foundation of extraction. As researcher Kate Crawford explains in Atlas of AI, the minerals required to build AI hardware, lithium, cobalt, copper and gold, are often mined under environmentally destructive and ethically troubling conditions. These impacts are hidden behind sleek interfaces and abstract metaphors, allowing users to believe AI exists apart from the physical world. It does not."
https://www.mercercluster.com/article/2026/03/opinion-ai-use-georgia-environment
Opinion: Learning about AI comes at a cost. Georgia feels it, too.
Artificial intelligence is often described as invisible — something that floats in the cloud and that quietly improves our lives from behind a screen. Until recently, I did not question that metaphor. As a Mercer student in Georgia, I once relied heavily on AI tools for studying, writing and research and rarely considered what powered them or what they demanded from the environment around me.
Captain Jack Sparrow