AI is a part of Mother Earth, too
And other revelations about artificial intelligence and our planet
One morning while I was completing my yoga teacher training in beautiful Bali, my teacher opened our morning practice with invitation: leave your yoga mats behind, and come outside.
We followed her out of the shala and into the textured jungle, gathering in a circle around her. She asked us to close down the eyes, to find our balance. As we pressed our bare feet into the soil, she guided us into a place of deep stillness before saying, “And, now, look around.”
The wind around us whispered as the heat fluttered the leaves, vines and brush of the jungle into a harmony of movement. The mishmash of nature around us now seemed wildly distinct, each leaf alive with an individual essence.
“We’re not separate,” my teacher said, her fingers grazing a banana leaf as wide as my shoulder. I held my own palm up to the underside of a leaf and noted with incredulity that the veins of my palms resembled the raised lines in the leaf. As I stepped into the green, I registered how large leaves mimicked the exact shape of human lungs. How the exhale of the jungle around me fed my inhale, and vice versa.
“We come from the Earth, and return to the Earth,” my teacher continued. “This is the cycle of our home — and we are a part of this cycle.”
This experience transformed how I view my place on this planet and the interconnectedness of all things. It’s now comical to me that we consider ourselves to be independent from the Earth — as if we could somehow separate our own health from the health of the ecosystem around us.
Which is why I felt it was urgent to host an Ai Salon conversation about “Mother Earth.” My decision to center this discussion around “Mother Earth” versus "Climate” or “Sustainability” was intentional, because AI’s relationship to our planet requires us to examine deeper questions: how does AI fit into our ecosystem? How can plant and ancestral intelligence inform the artificial?
I’ve written about AI and climate impact before — as have many others (this MIT article is a good starting point). But there’s still a lack of awareness of AI’s environmental impacts: most AI users don’t know, for example, that generating one image with a model like ChatGPT 4o is equivalent to charging your iPhone, or that the global AI demand in 2027 could account for the annual water consumption of 30–47 million people — comparable to the population of Canada.
Which led me to pose the question:
How do we build artificial intelligence while prioritizing and safeguarding our home, our Mother Earth?
For a few hours a few weeks ago, 20 AI thinkers and myself explored exactly this.
What I loved about this conversation is that we did not separate the scientific from the spiritual — there was a recognition that as humanity’s creation, AI is a creation of Mother Earth herself.
I was so moved by this conversation that I wanted to share a few of its insights with this community, in honor of Earth Day and SF Climate Week last week.
Top takeaways from the conversation:
🌎 "AI enables infinite existence - defying Earth's natural cycle of birth, life and death." AI systems will outlast human life cycles - and thus, for the first time, the cyclical nature of Earth will be disrupted. What will this mean? How will this forever change our ecosystem, if AI entities need to be powered forever?
🌏 "AI is the child of Mother Earth, too." AI is a product of human consciousness and effort, and powered by Earth materials. It is - therefore - a part of us. We have the responsibility to nurture and guide it, rather than only productize and promote it.
🌏 "The Earth isn't in trouble. WE are in trouble." We recognized that should climate catastrophe occur, the Earth will regenerate itself to continue in a new iteration. We, meanwhile, will not. This should drive an urgency to no longer see ourselves as separate from the health of our planet.
🌍 "Do they even care? Like, at all?" Corporations like Microsoft and Google have drastically increased carbon emissions as they race to power AI - defying earlier promises around carbon neutrality. This throws into question the efficacy of climate pledges and what importance should be given to corporate promises in the AI age.
🌏 “AI should be seen as speed, and humans as depth.” One participant reframed AI not as inherently superior or threatening, but simply as faster—emphasizing the need to cultivate human depth, values, and embodiment as a necessary counterbalance.
🌏 “We keep trying to fix this broken system from the inside. But it’s exhausting — it’s designed to be. What if we stop playing that game and instead pull on ancestral wisdom — boycotts, mutual aid, divesting? That’s where our power is.” Our ancestors have been here before. We’ve created change through collective action before. There is so much to be learned from the experience and wisdom of our ancestors.
🌍 “Community is a climate solution." This was felt so deeply by all of us - community isn't just a form of support or resistance, but is an actual climate solution - especially when institutions fail us.
🌍 “Plant medicines are the single fastest way to make someone feel truly connected to the Earth. They dissolve the illusion of separation. If more people experienced that, how would our relationship with technology change?” We reflected on how plant medicines—along with nature meditations and rituals—can restore a sense of humility and reverence often lost in AI circles, and might be crucial in informing how we build what comes next.
Artificial intelligence is a reflection of human intent. If we apply it to capitalistic ideals, it will only take and take. But if we create it mindfully, in a more balanced way that protects our planet and the humans that are inherently connected to that planet, we honor our interdependence with each other, with technology, and with the Earth.
Until next time,
Cecilia Callas
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RemAIning Human is written and edited by Cecilia Callas.