The OT Algorithm: Issue 28

For weeks now, wildfires across Ontario have been burning through vast stretches of land, and the devastation to Indigenous communities there has been staggering — homes lost, entire communities evacuated, ways of life disrupted. The smoke traveled far. Here in Chicago, our air quality index hit over 700 last Thursday, well past the 500 max on the meter, and only finally cleared yesterday.

I don't raise this to be dramatic. I raise it because it's connected to everything we talk about here, and I refuse to treat that connection as background noise.

We are living through the visible, breathable consequences of a warming planet. And we are simultaneously cheering on an industry that is expanding at breakneck speed, backed by enormous capital, and consuming staggering amounts of energy and water to do it. Those two facts are not in separate boxes. The data centers powering the tools we cover every week have a footprint. The communities that bear the environmental cost are often the ones with the least power to refuse it, exactly like the Indigenous communities losing to the wildfires right now.

This is why I keep coming back to ethical development and ethical adoption as a genuine demand. An industry with this much money and momentum behind it has a responsibility to do better — on climate, on equity, on transparency — and the people using these tools have a responsibility to ask harder questions about the cost.

Which makes this week's headline feel almost providential.

Note to readers: The ads and some of the links in these weekly newsletters contain affiliate links to help support my work. If you’d like to show support, all you have to do is click on them and look around their site a little bit. 🙂 Disclaimer: Placement of the ads included in these weekly issues is not an endorsement. Please do your own research before using any AI tools.

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