The promise was simple: more technology, more progress, more freedom.
But progress without restraint doesn’t liberate — it accelerates dependence.
Artificial intelligence was sold as an endless upward curve: smarter systems, faster solutions, frictionless life. What wasn’t mentioned is that infinite progress requires infinite extraction — of data, labor, energy, and human agency.
Every automation removes a skill.
Every optimization removes a choice.
Every convenience narrows the margin for error.
The myth isn’t that AI can’t advance — it’s that advancement alone equals improvement. Systems grow. Humans hollow out. And somewhere along the way, progress forgets to ask who is still steering.
The next reckoning won’t be about stopping technology.
It will be about reclaiming limits — before systems decide we’re inefficient obstacles to our own future.
👉 Full article / source link: Nature — “The Environmental Cost of Artificial Intelligence”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01602-0
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