These destructive behemoths are part of a broader model of total extraction—particularly in rural areas.
A yard sign opposing a planned data center is displayed along Route 54 in Mount Carmel Township, Pennsylvania.(Paul Weaver / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)
In 1970, Ivan Illich wrote Toward a History of Needs, a critique of the increasingly widespread belief that technological change was not only inevitable but nearly always a net good for society. Illich feared our growing dependence on rapidly emerging technologies and those that control them. Farmer and writer Wendell Berry made a similar argument in his 1977 book, The Unsettling of America, describing the process by which people and whole communities are “de-skilled,” their capacity to care for themselves and their neighbors atrophied.
In many ways, these dark visions are now unfolding. In particular, artificial intelligence is driving us toward de-skilling on a massive scale. This de-skilling, if it continues, will enable concentrated economic and political power at a level that will make the present seem egalitarian by comparison. And it will include the loss of hundreds of millions of jobs along the way, not as a byproduct but a feature, as evidenced by Open AI’s definition of AI as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.”
As described by my colleague Erica Etelson, the explosive growth of AI data centers has catalyzed a backlash in communities across the country. Residents are uniting across party lines in opposition to the noise, land use, and extraordinary levels of energy and water that data centers require. In response, promises of data centers fully powered by renewable energy or utilizing water-conserving cooling systems have emerged. Elon Musk promises to launch data centers into space, avoiding local land, water, and energy conflicts altogether.
It’s doubtful that such “green” data centers are even feasible. But based on the history of AI development, three outcomes are all but assured unless we act swiftly and decisively.
First, the AI arms race is propelling an unprecedented concentration of economic and political power. By the end of 2025, the top 10 CEOs and founders of AI and tech companies were worth $2.5 trillion, more than 8 percent of the total US GDP. This was before Elon Musk became a trillionaire.
The political influence of this tiny elite is large and growing, with a New York Times projection of at least $150 million being spent on the 2026 midterm races by AI companies and their allies. Alongside this spending are ongoing political influence campaigns ranging from the bullying threats of Musk to the charm offensive of Open AI CEO Sam Altman. A recently introduced bipartisan bill, dubbed the Great American Artificial Intelligence Act of 2026, is another example of the political power of the AI elite. It usurps the power of states to regulate AI and kicks the can down the road on the majority of the most critical concerns about AI, according to an analysis by Public Citizen.
The power of the biggest AI companies will encompass far more than oligarchy within this one industry, given AI’s steady insinuation into nearly every facet of our lives. The ultrarich owners of these corporations—Musk, Altman, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos and a handful of others—are working toward control of governments, public policy, and culture to a degree unseen in our history, not only because of their wealth but also because they are making the technology they control indispensable and ubiquitous.
Second, we are approaching a period of massive and rapid loss of jobs and near-elimination of whole categories of occupations. According to a May, 2025 piece in Axios, “technology companies are in a wild race to produce so-called Agents, or agentic AI. In its simplest form, an agent is AI that can do the work of humans—instantly, indefinitely and exponentially cheaper. Imagine an agent writing the code to power your technology, or handle finance frameworks and analysis, or customer support, or marketing, or copy editing or content distribution, or research. The possibilities are endless—and not remotely fantastical. Many of these agents are already operating inside companies, and many more are in fast production.”
A 2023 estimate by Goldman Sachs projected a potential loss of 300 million jobs worldwide, not only for workers in the so–called knowledge economy but also for wide swaths of service and blue-collar jobs. Mid-level “back office” jobs in HR, billing and payroll, and customer service are already very vulnerable.
Many AI industry supporters dismiss the potential for widespread job loss, claiming instead that the types of jobs available will simply shift to accommodate AI. How’s that going so far? Probably the biggest category of new jobs created by AI to date is “data annotators.” These are the thousands of people, primarily in Venezuela, Kenya, the Philippines, and other developing countries, who do the dirty work of AI. They review both texts and videos produced by Large Language Models, culling the seemingly endless stream of violent, offensive, racist, misogynistic and deviant content that is unavoidably swept up in the process of capturing data from every corner of the Internet. Like the giant nets of huge commercial fishing vessels, AI companies extract everything they can from human experience, good, bad and ugly. And then they pay workers a meager piece rate to find and delete the worst of it.
Finally, AI is fostering the de-skilling, even obsolescence, of human beings on a massive scale, at an extraordinary speed. The more pervasive and sophisticated AI becomes, the more likely that people will develop a dependence on it for everyday activities and functions, becoming less and less able to care for themselves, their families, and their neighbors without the intervention of AI. Functionally, this dependence will be not only on the technology but also on the tiny, über-wealthy elite who control it.
With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.
As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
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From a rural point of view, this de-skilling is particularly dangerous. Most people are aware that rural America has higher rates of poverty and unemployment, and with that, more problems in health, housing and other areas. But what is often missed is how the ideals of neighborliness and self-reliance, combined with the skills and knowledge needed to approach them, still operate in most rural communities. Farming, as one example, requires the know-how to adapt to changing weather, repair equipment and machinery, manage animals, pasture, and forests, improve the health of soils, and gauge and develop markets.
Within farming communities, these skills are often shared and adapted. My dear friend Charlie Foster and I competed for years to see who would have the first ripe tomato at market, along the way trading experiences about the varieties, hoop houses, and management techniques involved. Dwayne McIntyre expanded upon the systems of Joel Salatin to become one of the most diverse and productive beef, poultry, and dairy operations in our region. Mentored by Jason Rutledge, Chad Miano built a successful horse logging business, practicing outstanding forest stewardship while producing high-quality hardwood logs for market. Sr Bernie Kenny converted an RV into a mobile medical clinic, enabling people in the hollers of Appalachian Virginia to finally get reliable, affordable primary care.
Charlie, Dwayne, Chad, and Sister Bernie represent a different kind of AI, what could be called Accumulated Intelligence—knowledge that is slowly built, freely shared, steadily improved and expanded upon, then refined into the practical and essential skills that make good livelihoods and strong communities possible,
Artificial intelligence, by contrast, is driving the replacement of human-scale, farmer-led and land-based agriculture with capital-intensive, soil-free vertical farming, laboratory-produced meats, and self-driving tractors—all of which will exacerbate the already extreme level of corporate concentration in our food and farm system. And this model will be applied to all of humanity.
The de-skilling of Americans, and most people in so-called developed countries, has been underway for many years. But of late, the march of AI has begun to spark a backlash, from farmers demanding the right to repair their own equipment to the pushback from artists, writers, and creative folks of all sorts against the theft of their work. They’re fighting what Keoni Mahelona called “just a land grab all over again,” where Big Tech swallows up this accumulated intelligence only to “turn around and sell it back to us as a service” (quoted in Karen Hao’s Empire of AI).
What are we likely to get as recompense for this extreme concentration of wealth and power, the loss of perhaps hundreds of millions of jobs, and the society-wide loss of agency and self-determination? Cures for cancer? Perhaps some types, some day. Remedies for climate change? Much less likely, given that we already are information-rich on the causes and solutions, with little to show for it. Lives of leisure, unencumbered by jobs but sustained by a barely livable universal basic income? Most people want lives with meaning and purpose, not endless leisure and dependence on the powerful.
Should we be worried about artificial general intelligence destroying humanity? A number of AI insiders think that’s certainly a possibility.
Whether AI puts our survival as a species at risk may be an open question, but the hyper-concentration of wealth and power, built upon the exploitation of workers and the extraction of knowledge from millions of people, is not. It may not kill us all, but it is well on its way to stripping us of what it means to be human. Unless we radically change the trajectory of AI, a debilitating dependence on AI’s masters of extraction is a near-certain outcome.
Anthony FlaccaventoAnthony Flaccavento is an organic farmer and rural development consultant and the author of Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up: Harnessing Real-World Experience for Transformative Change. With Erica Etelson, he is a cofounder of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative.