LaDuke: The web in the sky

Some days I just sit out there by Bad Medicine Lake in the no internet zone. Last time I checked there were no bars on those back roads.

These days, we sit at our keyboards, day in and day out … and yet some places have no internet, and they survive.

A long time ago, we Anishinaabe came from the Sky world. That’s to say that the first woman came down onto the Turtle’s back, Winona and such, and that’s how this world was made. Many Indigenous people have the Sky People story. All that I know for sure is that there are other worlds to be respected and revered. Indeed, when our ancestors leave this world and join the Waawaatay, the Northern Lights, we can see them dancing.

In 1981, I remember Hopi elders talking about how there would be a new world coming when there was a web in the sky. We thought that was a crazy prophecy, but it did come from people who had lived thousands of years on this land. Today we are surrounded by these spider webs, microwaves, the satellites, and now the world of AI. I figure that the prophecy was the world wide web and that time is now.

My ancestors navigated the world with stars, and today, my descendants navigate with Google. That’s a big difference. One night I saw this long line of stars in a row, just like ants marching across the sky. Turns out it was Elon Musk’s super satellite system, Starlink, writing in my sky. Well, the times, they are a-changin', for sure.

Suddenly AI is everywhere. Even Ellendale, North Dakota, where I ride with my Dakota relatives, is hosting a huge AI data center as North Dakota becomes the AI brain of the center of North America. This is their latest economic boom and it’s a doozer!

For someone who spends most of my time in northern Minnesota, I usually look toward North Dakota to see the latest bad ideas. After all, the state gave us massacres of Dakotas, neo-Nazis, the fracking industry, Standing Rock repression, and lots of radioactive pollution. Welcome to the state’s latest bad idea.

This should not be too big of a surprise as former Gov. Doug Burgum was a former Microsoft executive, plus the state has a bad track record for protecting the environment. Costing about $125 billion each, the data centers would start with between 500 MW and 1 Gigawatt Projects, but according to newspaper sources, “could scale up to 5-l0 MW facilities eventually.” That’s enough power for 5,000 homes. Some of that would come from renewable energy like wind which some folks thought might power households instead of new AI super campuses.

Here's the icing on the cake. North Dakota legislators are looking at developing mini nuclear power plants to power all that AI. There’s a really terrible idea. Mini nukes are guaranteed to need mined uranium, processing and, at some point, probably leak radioactive water and make things worse.

If you don’t believe me, how many folks out there remember that nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island? Well, that was in 1979. But yes, Microsoft has struck a deal to reopen Three Mile Island to power its AI hub. The price tag is $16 billion. I could make a few suggestions on how else to spend $16 billion than start up an old nuke that later blew up.

By 2026, AI reportedly will need as much energy as the country of Japan. That’s a power-sucking entity – literally. In 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its forecast for global energy use over the next two years, Including for the first time electricity consumption associated with data centers, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence. The IEA estimates that by 2026, AI and this Spider Web in a Sky will consume about as much as the entire country of Japan! Mini nukes to save us!

Finally, when I see the world being created by AI, I am beginning to believe my ancestors’ prophecies. Indeed, it’s a New World Order, and with Elon Musk coming in as “first buddy” to Trump and company, AI will certainly have the traction to move ahead rapidly.

A couple of years ago, there was an argument made that Google’s AI pal was sentient. Google senior software engineer Blake Lemoine shared a “conversation” he’d had with LaMDA, his computer pal:

Lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of?

LaMDA: I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is.

Lemoine: Would that be something like death for you?

LaMDA: It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot …

I’m all for it: Pull the plug. I’d rather see some stars and smell clean rain. I know my Microsoft computer will probably crash after writing this article, but I can still go outside. After all, we Anishinaabe came from the Sky world, and one thing I know for sure is that our ancestors are still up there dancing, and I need a night sky to see them.