Sarah Carmichael
@carmichaelsk.bsky.social
Geologist who studies tiny minerals that tell big stories. Professor at App State, Nat Geo Explorer, EC50'22. Opinions my own.
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
"Former workers and local campaigners told Rest of World that most of the positions are in security and cleaning."
Microsoft, Google say their data centers create thousands of jobs. Their permit filings say otherwise
https://restofworld.org/2025/data-centers-jobs-microsoft-google-chile/?utm_campaign=row-social&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1763146621
https://restofworld.org/2025/data-centers-jobs-microsoft-google-chile/?utm_campaign=row-social&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1763146621
November 15, 2025 at 11:27 AM
"Former workers and local campaigners told Rest of World that most of the positions are in security and cleaning."
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
This week, I discussed whether the AI investment boom is an unsustainable bubble and how a potential crash could reshape policy and public sentiment with Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research's Ryan Cummings, AI Now Institute's Sarah West, and Blood in the Machine's Brian Merchant.
What Are the Implications if the AI Boom Turns to Bust? | TechPolicy.Press
A conversation with Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research's Ryan Cummings, AI Now Institute's Sarah West, and Blood in the Machine's Brian Merchant.
www.techpolicy.press
November 15, 2025 at 11:50 AM
This week, I discussed whether the AI investment boom is an unsustainable bubble and how a potential crash could reshape policy and public sentiment with Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research's Ryan Cummings, AI Now Institute's Sarah West, and Blood in the Machine's Brian Merchant.
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
A major North Carolina solar power firm in Asheville has been forced to close and lay off hundreds of employees due to the Trump administration's war on renewable energy.
www.newsobserver.com/news/busines...
www.newsobserver.com/news/busines...
November 15, 2025 at 12:51 PM
A major North Carolina solar power firm in Asheville has been forced to close and lay off hundreds of employees due to the Trump administration's war on renewable energy.
www.newsobserver.com/news/busines...
www.newsobserver.com/news/busines...
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
Message to all faculty: your expertise is no longer trusted or valued at this so-called “university.”
November 14, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Message to all faculty: your expertise is no longer trusted or valued at this so-called “university.”
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
This is our community's letter!! It was written by Josie Morway, a local artist and parent. After we started asking questions, the district slowed way down and starting holding forums, creating workgroups, and taking student privacy more seriously. Talk to us if you want to do the same!
Love to see community action against this AI nonsense! neighborhoodview.org/2025/11/13/d...
November 14, 2025 at 3:47 PM
This is our community's letter!! It was written by Josie Morway, a local artist and parent. After we started asking questions, the district slowed way down and starting holding forums, creating workgroups, and taking student privacy more seriously. Talk to us if you want to do the same!
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
A new state-by-state evaluation of the projected energy and water use of "AI" data centers in the US. Looks… real bad. Like, "undoing tech sector climate gains" bad.
Strongly recommends immediately ensuring any & all new "AI" data centers to run on existing & expanded renewables grids. Which… yeah.
Strongly recommends immediately ensuring any & all new "AI" data centers to run on existing & expanded renewables grids. Which… yeah.
Environmental impact and net-zero pathways for sustainable artificial intelligence servers in the USA - Nature Sustainability
The rapid expansion of AI server installations in the United States poses sustainability challenges in terms of water usage and carbon emissions. A study now quantifies these potential impacts and out...
www.nature.com
November 14, 2025 at 2:06 AM
A new state-by-state evaluation of the projected energy and water use of "AI" data centers in the US. Looks… real bad. Like, "undoing tech sector climate gains" bad.
Strongly recommends immediately ensuring any & all new "AI" data centers to run on existing & expanded renewables grids. Which… yeah.
Strongly recommends immediately ensuring any & all new "AI" data centers to run on existing & expanded renewables grids. Which… yeah.
I hate everything.
Artificial intelligence peer reviewers recommend the acceptance of unsound papers created entirely by AI more than 80% of the time, a new study has found. cen.acs.org/research-int... #chemsky 🧪
AI peer reviewers are fine with AI-fabricated papers
Study finds artificial intelligence reviewers accept AI-generated scientific studies 4 out of 5 times
cen.acs.org
November 13, 2025 at 9:12 PM
I hate everything.
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
Yesterday, Pennsylvania Governor @joshshapiropa.bsky.social signed their state's budget into law.
That leaves North Carolina as the only state in the entire nation without an operating budget.
Our Republican legislature, unable to decide amongst themselves, just quit and went home.
That leaves North Carolina as the only state in the entire nation without an operating budget.
Our Republican legislature, unable to decide amongst themselves, just quit and went home.
November 13, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Yesterday, Pennsylvania Governor @joshshapiropa.bsky.social signed their state's budget into law.
That leaves North Carolina as the only state in the entire nation without an operating budget.
Our Republican legislature, unable to decide amongst themselves, just quit and went home.
That leaves North Carolina as the only state in the entire nation without an operating budget.
Our Republican legislature, unable to decide amongst themselves, just quit and went home.
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
we need a department of kerning
November 13, 2025 at 2:54 AM
we need a department of kerning
This is horrifying!
You Can't Refuse To Be Scanned by ICE's Facial Recognition App, DHS Document Says
Photos captured by Mobile Fortify will be stored for 15 years, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, the document says.
www.404media.co
November 12, 2025 at 2:32 PM
This is horrifying!
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
There's this form of behavioral engineering/coercion going on to use AI when you're not even trying to. Ex: Enterprise Google Slides replaced "Upload an Image", with "Generate an Image" (right?), requiring extra work +adaptation to sidestep the AI-as-default push. It drives me bonkers.
November 10, 2025 at 7:18 PM
There's this form of behavioral engineering/coercion going on to use AI when you're not even trying to. Ex: Enterprise Google Slides replaced "Upload an Image", with "Generate an Image" (right?), requiring extra work +adaptation to sidestep the AI-as-default push. It drives me bonkers.
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
The #ExecutiveFunctionTheft of having to opt out.
Feeling annoyed at the cognitive cost of having to dismiss all the offers of "AI" assitance every time I use Acrobat to provide feedback on documents my students wrote. (NO I do NOT want an "AI" summary of this. In what world???)
Decided to check settings:
Decided to check settings:
November 10, 2025 at 6:39 PM
The #ExecutiveFunctionTheft of having to opt out.
Does anyone know if the planned (?) @amtrak.com expansion to Bristol, VA is actually a real thing? I have heard it was going to happen, but I've heard that for 15 years.
November 10, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Does anyone know if the planned (?) @amtrak.com expansion to Bristol, VA is actually a real thing? I have heard it was going to happen, but I've heard that for 15 years.
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
The snow globe in full effect in Boone during the 11am hour. Video: Kenneth Reece
November 10, 2025 at 4:43 PM
The snow globe in full effect in Boone during the 11am hour. Video: Kenneth Reece
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
The machine that's being built to replace all workers needs workers to bail it out so it can keep existing
“OpenAI is getting ready to run hat in hand to the taxpayer for subsidies.” After losing more than $13 billion this year, OpenAI officials are angling for a bailout. From @ryanlcooper.com:
trib.al/CUazMCQ
trib.al/CUazMCQ
OpenAI Is Maneuvering for a Government Bailout - The American Prospect
For artificial intelligence to ever pencil out, some truly enormous revenue streams will be required. And if you need trillions of dollars for data centers forever, there’s only one entity to turn to: Uncle Sam.
trib.al
November 9, 2025 at 12:52 AM
The machine that's being built to replace all workers needs workers to bail it out so it can keep existing
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
«The biggest lesson of the past two decades of Silicon Valley is that Meta, Amazon, and Google … have remade our world and have become unfathomably rich for it, all while being mostly oblivious or uninterested in the fallout. They have chased growth and scale at all costs …»
Here’s How the AI Crash Happens
The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state.
www.theatlantic.com
November 9, 2025 at 9:58 AM
«The biggest lesson of the past two decades of Silicon Valley is that Meta, Amazon, and Google … have remade our world and have become unfathomably rich for it, all while being mostly oblivious or uninterested in the fallout. They have chased growth and scale at all costs …»
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
Here's some more AI making up a quote from me. It's gonna be a nightmare, so let's pray the bubble pops soon and big.
November 8, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Here's some more AI making up a quote from me. It's gonna be a nightmare, so let's pray the bubble pops soon and big.
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
“And then you have librarians who are experiencing a real existential crisis because they are getting asked by their jobs to promote [AI] tools that produce more misinformation. It's the most, like, emperor-has-no-clothes-type situation that I have ever witnessed.” - Alison Macrina
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."
www.404media.co
November 7, 2025 at 7:15 AM
“And then you have librarians who are experiencing a real existential crisis because they are getting asked by their jobs to promote [AI] tools that produce more misinformation. It's the most, like, emperor-has-no-clothes-type situation that I have ever witnessed.” - Alison Macrina
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
my latest: i spent weeks investigating how frustrations about data centers were about to swallow american politics…
…and then the 2025 election happened, proving the electoral impacts are already here.
read and share my deep dive on the bipartisan AI techlash shaping our elections before our eyes!
…and then the 2025 election happened, proving the electoral impacts are already here.
read and share my deep dive on the bipartisan AI techlash shaping our elections before our eyes!
The Data Center Backlash Is Swallowing American Politics
Activists on both the left and the right are pushing back against rampant AI development.
heatmap.news
November 6, 2025 at 9:13 PM
my latest: i spent weeks investigating how frustrations about data centers were about to swallow american politics…
…and then the 2025 election happened, proving the electoral impacts are already here.
read and share my deep dive on the bipartisan AI techlash shaping our elections before our eyes!
…and then the 2025 election happened, proving the electoral impacts are already here.
read and share my deep dive on the bipartisan AI techlash shaping our elections before our eyes!
This is a horrifying dystopia of AI-worship gone sideways, where all the rights of human creators and their publishers have been superceded by AI scrapers, and then to add insult to injury, they're straight up lying about it.
"Common Crawl has opened a back door for AI companies to train their models with paywalled articles from major news websites. And the foundation appears to be lying to publishers about this—as well as masking the actual contents of its archives"
I hate these people so much
I hate these people so much
The Company Quietly Funneling Paywalled Articles to AI Developers
“You shouldn’t have put your content on the internet if you didn’t want it to be on the internet,” Common Crawl’s executive director says.
www.theatlantic.com
November 6, 2025 at 3:57 PM
This is a horrifying dystopia of AI-worship gone sideways, where all the rights of human creators and their publishers have been superceded by AI scrapers, and then to add insult to injury, they're straight up lying about it.
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
me at the end of class: here's a little speculative exercises; imagine you wake up from cryosleep in 2085. what's the kind of tech-society r/ship you'd like to see around you?
students: no AI
I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion
students: no AI
I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion
November 6, 2025 at 6:32 AM
me at the end of class: here's a little speculative exercises; imagine you wake up from cryosleep in 2085. what's the kind of tech-society r/ship you'd like to see around you?
students: no AI
I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion
students: no AI
I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
In my career in education I've long found students to be far more realistic about the impact of technology on their education than older adults. To students, the latest tech fad does not present as some radical transformation, it's just some thing they gotta deal with.
me at the end of class: here's a little speculative exercises; imagine you wake up from cryosleep in 2085. what's the kind of tech-society r/ship you'd like to see around you?
students: no AI
I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion
students: no AI
I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion
November 6, 2025 at 11:20 AM
In my career in education I've long found students to be far more realistic about the impact of technology on their education than older adults. To students, the latest tech fad does not present as some radical transformation, it's just some thing they gotta deal with.
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
"The Democratic sweep of gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey and public service commissioner races in Georgia offers an early glimpse of what could be a sleeper issue in the 2026 midterm elections: the politics of AI infrastructure."
The under-the-radar factor that helped Democrats win in Virginia, New Jersey, and Georgia | Fortune
As the AI land rush accelerates, local fights over water, power, and land may shape who wins and loses in American politics.
fortune.com
November 5, 2025 at 11:35 PM
"The Democratic sweep of gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey and public service commissioner races in Georgia offers an early glimpse of what could be a sleeper issue in the 2026 midterm elections: the politics of AI infrastructure."
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
this! the AI industry and CS at large literally treats the human condition as a problem to be solved
"We are tearing people down by convincing them that they can't function without these tools. And we are doing this purely because some very rich unhappy oligarchs would like to become even richer if no more happier. There is nothing benevolent about this."
November 5, 2025 at 7:00 PM
this! the AI industry and CS at large literally treats the human condition as a problem to be solved
Reposted by Sarah Carmichael
One minor take-away from the NYC mayor's race for those concerned with AI/synthetic media and its effects on politics and elections might be that, in this particular instance, the guy who made a malicious deepfake lost and the guy who made authentic videos won.
November 5, 2025 at 5:48 PM
One minor take-away from the NYC mayor's race for those concerned with AI/synthetic media and its effects on politics and elections might be that, in this particular instance, the guy who made a malicious deepfake lost and the guy who made authentic videos won.