More than a decade ago I was working on a book about the impact of data on society. I was obsessed with a maddening and seemingly impossible idea: What if we could track every single piece of data that mattered in the world, and from that data, gain unimaginable insights that would shake us into an entirely new age – the equivalent of moving from Medieval times to the Renaissance?
Of course, I was struggling with this thesis well before AI became mainstream. I knew that the compute and algorithms needed to turn my musings into reality were on the horizon, but I simply could not find a way to realize the concepts I sensed were playing out all around me. I felt like Captain Ahab, madly chasing a spectral leviathan of data. I spent days staring out at the ocean from a rented cottage on the beach, imagining every molecule of water as information dancing across sentient processors. It was about this time that I made an uneasy peace with my ambitions to be the next Gleick or McPhee. Rather than submit to the insanity of the matrix, I abandoned the project, and it has haunted me ever since.
I relate this literary failure to give context to news of an extraordinary project announced this week. Google launched “AlphaEarth Foundations,” an ambitious platform that maps our planet in “unprecedented detail,” integrating “petabytes of Earth observation data to generate a unified data representation that revolutionizes global mapping and monitoring.” This is exactly the kind of story I would have killed to include in my erstwhile book – unimaginable reams of data, a years-long quest to make sense of it all, a breakthrough that yields untold insights and opportunities. From Google’s post about AlphaEarth:
[AlphaEarth] accurately and efficiently characterizes the planet’s entire terrestrial land and coastal waters by integrating huge amounts of Earth observation data into a unified digital representation, or “embedding,” that computer systems can easily process. This allows the model to provide scientists with a more complete and consistent picture of our planet’s evolution, helping them make more informed decisions on critical issues like food security, deforestation, urban expansion, and water resources.
I devoured Google’s description of AlphaEarth, but as I read through it, something seemed to be missing. Given its ability to accurately portray changes across our planet’s surface, isn’t the most “critical issue” it might address our terrifyingly present and entirely existential problem of climate change?
Not according to Google. I re-read Google’s post – and while there are brief mentions of how AlphaFold might help us understand “environmental changes,” there’s no overt mention of global warming or climate change.
The omission is clearly intentional. With the EPA now in charge of killing the science that proves climate change, and a President whose punitive proclivities are haphazard and autocratic, Google, a company squarely in the crosshairs of government shakedowns, does not want to poke the bear.
Thankfully, my alma mater Wired drew its own conclusions. The headline it chose when covering AlphaFold? “Google’s Newest AI Model Acts Like a Satellite to Track Climate Change.” Yep, that feels about right – but you won’t see any Googlers talking openly about that subject. It’s been written out of the PR script.
The AlphaFold rollout is one small example of an odious trend that’s taken hold throughout corporate America, as well as in universities, hospitals and clinics, and most media. Our Dear Leader has decreed that “woke” subjects like climate change, DEI, and gay rights must be erased from the national conversation. Failure to do so will bring retribution in the form of lawsuits, regulatory harassment, MAGA boycotts and even death threats.
If you feel like you’re living in the opening chapters of 1984, know you’re not alone. Newspeak is real, and it’s happening all around us. Happy Friday.
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