DPC Reading Club - AI, water and the ethics of environmental resistance

Check your local time for the event here.

Our DPC Reading Club in September 2025, chaired by William Kilbride, takes up the theme of environmental impacts and AI, responding in part to bizarrely misguided but widely reported advice from a government official that deleting old email was a solution to England's water crisis.  Research and activism have increasingly denounced the problematic environmental record of the infrastructure and value chain underpinning Artificial Intelligence (AI). Water-intensive data centres, polluting mineral extraction and e-waste dumping are incontrovertibly part of AI’s footprint. The reading this month looks at areas affected by AI-fuelled environmental harm and identifies an ethics of resistance emerging from local activists, which are termed ‘elemental ethics’.

The reading 'An Elemental Ethics for Artificial Intelligence: Water as Resistance Within AI’s Value Chain' by Sebastián Lehuedé of the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4756794

Lehuedé, S 2024 An Elemental Ethics for Artificial Intelligence: Water as Resistance Within AI’s Value Chain , AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication, online at https://ssrn.com/abstract=4756794

When reading the article, have a think about the following questions which we will discuss together:

• What did you learn from the article? Was it an interesting read?

• Was there anything that surprised you in the article …or was there perhaps something that you disagreed with?

• Do you think you will do anything differently as a result of reading this article - does it change your practices or thinking in any way?

• Is there anything we should do as a community or the DPC could help with?

Any other observations or discussion points also welcome!

More information about Reading Club (and a reading list so you can catch up on anything you've missed) can be found here.

Registration

This will be a small and informal event for DPC Members only and places are limited. Sign up now to secure your place! We only ask that you have done the reading that has been set before the event and bring along your thoughts and observations to share.

Places for DPC members will be restricted to five places for full members and one place for associates on a first come, first served basis. If you find you are no longer able to attend, please let us know in advance so we can free up your space to those on the waiting list.

DPC Members, please log in to register.

If you are having any issues registering, please contact eleanor.oleary@dpconline.org 

DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. We encourage diversity in all its forms and are committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation, whilst remaining technology and vendor neutral. We ask all those who are part of this community to be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.