The cost of AI is being paid in deserts far from Silicon Valley

16 donohoe 3 5/26/2025, 2:09:30 PM restofworld.org ↗

Comments (3)

growthwtf · 1d ago
I'm not familiar with the situation and so was curious about the assertions of scale increases in the article, and disappointed in the lack of citations.

Here are a few resources I found on the subject:

- https://www.mining.com/copper-industry-needs-to-invest-2-1-t...

- https://cilive.com/commodities/metals-mining/news-and-insigh...

- https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chiles-copper-mi...

Sounds like a tough situation, although I remain skeptical about how much of it is due directly to AI as the author is trying to assert versus other growth technologies.

siliconc0w · 1d ago
More countries should boot out the foreign multinationals exploiting their resources and build their own sovereign wealth. People need the copper and the capital is there to build your own infrastructure.
bryanlarsen · 1d ago
Indonesia seems to be having some success with a ban of export of unrefined raw materials. I imagine a lot of other countries like Chile are watching it closely.

I also imagine that this has attracted the ire of some very powerful interests, so Indonesia could do with some allies.