In the wake of ChatGPT’s release in late 2022, artificial intelligence quickly became a global obsession—and a corporate gold rush. But behind the promises of productivity, convenience, and innovation lies a far more sobering reality: AI is accelerating energy consumption, fueling inequality, and embedding mass surveillance deeper into the foundations of society.

This article is the first in a four-part series adapted from the Bioneers 2025 panel AI and the Ecocidal Hubris of Silicon Valley, featuring leading voices who challenge the dominant narratives about AI and call for deeper scrutiny of its impacts. Read to the end to access the next three essays.

Here, journalist and activist Koohan Paik-Mander delivers a sweeping critique of AI as the latest frontier of late-stage capitalism. A co-founder of the Tech Critics Network and board member of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Paik-Mander draws a clear line from data centers to autocracy, and makes the case that the surveillance economy isn’t just dystopian. It’s already here.

KOOHAN PAIK-MANDER: Artificial intelligence—AI—is attracting truly enormous amounts of investment these days. In the two years since the introduction of ChatGPT, hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into AI, all chasing the kinds of returns that Silicon Valley has traditionally seen. That’s why AI is being pushed down our throats at every turn.

At climate conferences like COP, you’ll see corporate banners claiming AI will cure climate change. At biological diversity conferences, fossil fuel companies tout AI as the solution to species extinction. And politicians across party lines, from Trump to Biden, celebrate AI as the path to U.S. dominance. Techno-utopianism is a bipartisan fever dream.

The entire globalized economy is racing to saturate civilization with AI, no matter the cost. If it means building data centers from sea to shining sea, so be it. If those data centers use so much energy that they foreclose the possibility of ever reaching climate solutions, hey, we’ll just open Three Mile Island and use nuclear power. And if those nuclear power plants take decades to come online? Fossil fuels will suffice in the meantime, because you can’t stop the wheels of progress, right? 

This is late-stage capitalism, and AI is the poster child. It’s capitalism eating itself and everything else. 

Now, I’m not saying that AI doesn’t have good, useful applications. But we need to start examining the real costs of an AI-driven society. That’s why I’m excited to introduce three incredible thinkers who are helping us do just that: Paris Marx from Canada, Soledad Vogliano from Argentina, and, from the exotic land of Healdsburg, California, Claire Cummings.

Before we get to them, let’s take a moment to demystify AI. It’s not intelligent. It doesn’t think. It’s basically a very sophisticated classification machine that makes predictions based on large volumes of data. Building an AI system typically involves scraping the entire internet, or collecting as much genetic or biometric data as possible, and training the model to recognize patterns. What you get is a fancy machine that makes educated guesses. 

And because they’re just guesses, they’re often wrong. The industry doesn’t call them mistakes; it calls them “hallucinations,” a term that conveniently anthropomorphizes the machine. And these errors are baked into the system—you can’t eliminate them. Worse, you often can’t even trace how the mistake occurred. That’s the “black box phenomenon”: millions of calculations happening at once, totally opaque, with no audit trail.

When you think about the fact that Elon Musk has used AI to determine which people and programs are getting cut from the federal budget, it’s infuriating.

The enormous power asymmetry created by the AI economy can’t be overstated. In the past 30 years, digital technology has basically been the most effective means of accelerating inequity and centralizing control, maybe since slavery. Think about it: Of the ten richest people in the world, eight are Silicon Valley tech magnates. This isn’t a coincidence. There’s something inherent in this technology that drives inequality.

AI is what’s known as a “force multiplier.” It amplifies this dynamic of inequity and locks it in. It does this by embedding itself in society’s infrastructure: massive data centers, yes, but also the vast surveillance web of the “Internet of Things”—smart appliances, connected cars, facial recognition cameras, biometric sensors. These aren’t conveniences. They’re surveillance tools. And surveillance, as we know, is a cornerstone of autocracy and fascism. 

At the same time, investors are frothing at the mouth to pour billions of dollars into AI. A few years ago, The Economist ran a cover that said, “Data is the new oil.” If that’s true, then AI is the refinery, processing raw data into pure power for a small group of oligarchs.

This is late-stage capitalism, and AI is the poster child. It’s capitalism eating itself and everything else. 

The AI surveillance infrastructure entrenches a profound power asymmetry in our society. This is nothing to sneeze at. The corporate state knows everything about us, and we don’t know anything about it. These are the conditions for fascism. And the persecution has already begun. 

This data surveillance infrastructure serves three main purposes. First, it continually trains AI by harvesting new data. It’s never done learning, and it needs constant input. Second, it builds detailed personal profiles for every one of us—profiles that can be used to control us. Third, those profiles are monetized. You become the product.

Let’s take a look at how that plays out. Say you miss a payment on your car insurance. Your insurance company can remotely deactivate your engine. Say you live in a smart home, and someone who remodeled your kitchen visits you regularly. If that person later commits a crime, it could be associated with your profile, potentially impacting your ability to get a job or a loan.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s the same proximity-based technology used by Lavender AI to determine kill list targets. Tens of thousands of people have been assassinated using this system, simply for being near someone labeled a terrorist.

The poster child for all this? Cambridge Analytica. Remember them? The cyber warfare firm that worked with Steve Bannon to manipulate 230 million Americans in 2016 using AI tools to identify and target persuadable voters. That manipulation helped elect Trump and later passed Brexit. Airbnb now uses similar methods to shut down local legislation aimed at regulating short-term rentals.

And still, people tell me, “This isn’t my problem—I’m not even on social media.” But it is everyone’s problem. If enough people are persuaded by this propaganda, it shapes policy that affects us all.

Sure, AI can be fun. You can make weird videos. But that doesn’t address the core issue: the staggering power imbalance created by embedding surveillance into the very fabric of our civilization just to prop up the AI economy. For me, that’s a deal breaker. 

To continue unpacking the global consequences of artificial intelligence, we’re sharing a series of essays adapted from the Bioneers 2025 session AI and the Ecocidal Hubris of Silicon Valley. Each contributor brings a unique lens to the broader critique of techno-solutionism and the systems that support it.

In the next articles, you’ll hear from:

• Paris Marx, tech critic and author of Road to Nowhere, who exposes the staggering energy and water consumption required to sustain the AI boom—and what that means for our climate future.

• Soledad Vogliano, political scientist and agroecology educator, who explores how AI and synthetic biology are converging in the digitization of food systems, threatening biodiversity, sovereignty, and labor rights.

• Claire Cummings, environmental lawyer and author of Uncertain Peril, who traces the political and legal history that allowed genetic engineering to grow unchecked—and warns how similar forces are at play in AI.