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Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protections Agency administrator, might not be making much progress on the climate front, but he apparently has big plans for robots.
On May 15, Zeldin unabashedly told the House Appropriations Committee that he intends for the United States to become the “AI capital of the world.”
And with the billionaire backers of artificial intelligence funneling money into President Donald Trump’s inaugural fund as they join him on his trip to Saudi Arabia, it seems like Zeldin just might be right.
For the nostalgic type still chasing some semblance of the American dream, the new AI boom—and every country racing to get a stronghold on its capabilities—may be reminiscent of past races for the United States to become the best at the latest technology.
But as Trump’s team lays a legal red carpet out for AI’s elite, the implications of what that actually means for everyday people are becoming more apparent.
An immediate fear was that AI would take away jobs from Americans, but now AI is actually replacing humans even in the hiring process. While human employers are required not to consider things like race, gender, and other protected classes when making hiring decisions, AI finds grey areas to potentially do just that.
“An AI system may be trained on and then be fed an enormous amount of personal data from all kinds of different scenarios, like your web browsing habits, your shopping habits, your location at various periods of time,” Margot Kaminski, a professor at University of Colorado Law School, told Daily Kos.
As an example, Kaminski said, “Maybe it figures out that people who shop at Target on Tuesdays in the afternoons are less likely to be good employees. It doesn't give you a reason. It doesn't explain why that's relevant to its decision making. It just decides, ‘Hey, statistically, it's more likely that these people are not going to be good employees.’”
EPA Administrator Lee ZeldinIn other words, while a human employer wouldn’t ask a potential employee about their shopping habits on their off days, these systems take an impersonal approach simply to save companies time and money.
Adding to the issue, AI’s method of parsing through personal data may not directly discriminate on the basis of gender, race, or other protected classes, but its statistical approach might do so anyway.
“Are we okay with employers effectively making decisions on the basis of things that a human decision maker would consider to be completely random and not justified? And does it turn out that people who shop at Target on Tuesdays at 2 PM tend to be, you know, moms who don't have full-time employment?” Kaminski said.
Racism, ageism, and sexism in AI hiring practices have been running rampant for years now, but the laws on what AI can and cannot do are still extremely weak both at the state and federal level. In fact, there are no comprehensive federal laws relating to AI.
To make matters worse, the House Energy and Commerce Committee pushed forward a bill on May 11 that proposes a 10-year moratorium on any state and local AI regulations—meaning that AI companies will have free reign to do whatever they please without restriction for the next decade.
But biased hiring practices only graze the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ethical concerns with AI. But the scientific community has been considering another major issue altogether: sustainability.
For a while now, the carbon and water footprint of these massive centers has been swept under the rug.
Shaolei Ren, AI expert and associate professor at the University of California, Riverside, shared a joint research report with Daily Kos regarding the environmental harm done by AI.
“The global AI demand is projected to account for 4.2 – 6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal in 2027, which is more than the total annual water withdrawal of 4 – 6 Denmark or half of the United Kingdom,” the report said.
Taking it a step further, Ren’s research looks into how these environmental impacts will ultimately take a toll on human health.
“While significant attention has been paid to AI's growing environmental footprint, the public health burden, a hidden toll of AI, has been largely overlooked. The total public health burden of U.S. data centers in 2030 is valued at up to more than $20 billion per year, double that of U.S. coal-based steelmaking and comparable to that of on-road emissions of California,” one study, titled “The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying the Public Health Impact of AI,” said.
There’s a reason that Zeldin testified in favor of boosting AI, and it’s because these super centers require an insane amount of energy.
While Zeldin is working to cut down the EPA and make it easier for corporations to get away with anything, other Trump administration staff are also working overtime to make sure that AI CEOs have green lights all the way.
For example, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is fast tracking uranium mines to fuel the nuclear power that AI desperately needs. He’s also signing new coal leases across the United States to reopen mines and boost the dirty energy industry.
And thanks to Trump’s push for more coal, a new rule meant to protect miners against illnesses like black lung disease won’t be enforced for at least another three months.
Even Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is doing her part to urge people to jump into the mines as the administration attempts to meet the energy needs it anticipates as AI continues to grow.
As chaotic as the Trump administration seems, there’s no doubt that everyone’s on the same page when it comes to making this AI fever dream a reality.
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