SciCafe: Mapping the Costs of AI

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

7 pm

A brightly lit hallway in a data center. The smooth floor is featureless, with racks of servers behind glass windows to the left and the right.
iStock

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

7 pm

Generative AI is often described as abstract—as code in the cloud, with little material impact.

But the reality is that AI is one of the largest infrastructures humans have created.  

Join Kate Crawford, leading AI scholar, author of Atlas of AI, and research professor at the University of Southern California, as she explores the environmental and human cost of AI systems, from the minerals mined to build them, to the energy and water they consume, to the unseen impact on workers. With data centers popping up across the U.S. and critical minerals at the center of geopolitics, this talk lays out how AI is reshaping our world—not just digitally, but physically. 

Resources for SciCafe’s Frequent Geeks  

Quick Pick: Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring—and mostly secret

Big Bite: Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources

Deep Dive: Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford

Bonus Pick: SciCafe speaker Kate Crawford recently co-authored this New York Times opinion piece on how A.I.’s Environmental Impact Will Threaten Its Own Supply Chain. (subscription required)

 

ASL interpretation is available for this program. Please email [email protected] to reserve seats in our ASL section.