Notices by ana vldv (ana_valdi@mastodon.social)

🌻 For my upcoming book, The Ecologies of Algorithmic Machines, I created a diagram that illustrates the different phases (and corresponding chapters) exploring the materiality of AI.

Please feel free to share and cite it if you find it useful. I'd also welcome feedback to improve the diagram.

"Tracing operating infrastructures in data factories, manufacturing processes in the semiconductor industry, extracting activities by mining companies, and decomposing procedures in the electronic recycling reveals the environmental-making regimes of the supply chains of algorithmic machines that organises power, capital, and life. This perspective also offers an opportunity to weave threads of local solidarity in the realm of industrial ruins left behind in the name of ‘progress’."

"By bringing an ecological perspective into the study of its materiality, I investigate the historical contingencies embodied in the production of algorithmic machines that help us undo this dichotomy between the artificial and the natural."

"In this book, I challenge this dichotomy by arguing algorithmic machines are not only transforming nature, but are also themselves shaped by transformative processes entangled in the webs of life. The contemporary scalability of AI technologies--- understood as the recent development of large algorithmic architectures--- has not only rendered visible the materiality upon which these machines depend, but has also exposed their destructive dependence on nature."

🌱 Very happy to announce that the draft of my book is almost ready. It has been more than three years of investigation into the supply chains of AI, conducting also an historical analysis into its materiality and environmental-making regimes:
 
"Algorithmic machines and nature have been traditionally treated as separate entities: what is artificial is not natural, and what is natural is not artificial."

@javisamo ¿cuánta agua consume una cocaina soberana? seguro que aunque sea mucha, dará muchos puestos de trabajo!

Unveiling the veils:

"Tech sector says only carbon-emitting gas plants are reliable enough today to power the EU’s AI goals."

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/

@CorioPsicologia con el Papa hemos topado! x)

According to my preliminary data analysis, UK data centers that signed the Climate Change Agreement were among the most polluting facilities, reporting more than 14 million tonnes of CO₂e emissions, second only to the plastic, food and drink, steel, and chemical industries combined.

Queretaro is rising up to demand justice in their territory amid data centres' expansion that are dispossessing communities from land and water.

Mobilisation tomorrow (April 25, 2026; at 3pm).

I am writing a book on the environmental impacts of AI supply chains, and I am uncovering disturbing stories about companies destroying not only the environment but also thousands of people's lives. Do you have any advice regarding libel in the UK? I am concerned that companies could sue me for defamation, so any guidance would be welcome.

🚨 New publication out!

I've contributed to the edited book on "AI Infrastructures and Sustainability" <OPEN ACCESS> by coining the methodological concept "Following the Thing AI" that defetishises AI commodities by revealing the socio-environmental impacts that underpins it.

👉 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-09748-4_2

Yesterday, 12 academics from diverse backgrounds and career stages gathered at the OII (Oxford, UK) to tackle a crucial question: "What does it mean to govern AI in the Anthropocene?" We reflected on the scale of digital infrastructure and explored which digital presents and futures lie ahead.

@sy was one of our keynotes who reflected on the concept of "radical abundance" in a digital postgrowth scenario.

@fanta ayer nos informaron de un videojuego en el que eres un operador de un centro de datos. en cuánto nos llegue más info sobre el juego lo comparto!

@fanta @tunubesecamirio ganazas de leer este currazo :kirby:

Por si queréis ver la entrevista, aquí está online: https://www.youtube.com/live/sE-SLAVNXzc?si=JGJY6NBCOHcYAD4k.

Hoy (31/01/26) se volverá a emitir en el canal 24h de TVE a las 16:15 hora peninsular.

Ayer me entrevistó Lorenzo Milà en el programa Objetivo Planeta del canal 24h de TVE sobre la sostenibilidad de la IA y de los centros de datos. Me dejé muchas cosas en el tintero que @CorioPsicologia hubiera expresado 1000 veces mejor.

Pero ahí aportamos nuestro granito de arena para entender que esta tecnología ni es sostenible ni es beneficiosa. La industria de la nube recibe alfombras rojas de las administraciones locales, sin tener en cuenta los impactos socio-ecológicos que suponen.

🌩️🌳New publication out with my colleague Nicolás Díaz Bejarano at @envplane:

Thirsty Forests and Expansive Droughts: The environmental impacts of data centers in Latin America

https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/YV3INWCBDFK78HFMR4KP/full

@fanta @PostApocalipsisNau seguro que sí!

este es el paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0328965

@fanta @PostApocalipsisNau ahí va:

https://engineering.osu.edu/news/2025/11/powered-mushrooms-living-computers-are-rise