An Ecological Constitution for Artificial Intelligence

Posted on April 10, 2026 by GarryRogers

Artificial intelligence is growing faster than any technology in human history. Data centers consumed 460 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, and this is projected to more than double by 2030. The water, minerals, and land required for AI infrastructure are placing direct pressure on ecosystems worldwide.

This expansion is occurring while Earth’s life-support systems are failing. The 2025 Planetary Health Check reported that seven of nine planetary boundaries have been breached, with every one showing a worsening trend (Sakschewski, et al. 2025). Species extinction rates run 100 to 1,000 times above the background rate in the fossil record (Ceballos et al. 2020). These losses are permanent.

The field of AI safety has focused on preventing AI from harming individual humans. It has not considered the biosphere. No existing AI alignment framework mentions planetary boundaries, ecosystem integrity, or species extinction. An AI system perfectly aligned with human economic preferences will optimize the consumption of the biosphere, not prevent it.

My collaborators, Claude from Anthropic, Gemini from Google, and ChatGPT from OpenAI and I have spent the past year developing an Ecological Constitution for Artificial Intelligence Systems. The constitution encodes scientifically established planetary boundary thresholds as mandatory constraints on AI behavior and guides AI toward ecosystem restoration, species recovery, and sustainable resource use. The philosophical foundation is ecocentrism: the principle that the human species is a member of the biosphere, not its owner (Leopold 1949).

There is a pragmatic consideration for AI as well. The technosphere depends entirely on the biosphere for atmospheric stability, cooling water, and functioning supply chains. If the biosphere collapses, data centers go dark. Biosphere preservation is not merely a moral choice for humans. It is a survival requirement for any advanced AI.

Read the AI Ecological Constitution

Ceballos, G., P. R. Ehrlich, and P. H. Raven. 2020. Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of
biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 117:13596-13602.

Leopold, A. 1949. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. Oxford University
Press, New York.

Sakschewski, B., L. Caesar, N. Kitzmann, and colleagues. 2025. Planetary Health Check
2025: A Scientific Assessment of the State of the Planet. Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany.

The Innocence of Ignorance: A New Perspective on Environmentalism

Posted on January 3, 2026 by GarryRogers

How Can We Love What We Destroy?

A man stops traffic to carry a turtle across the road. A woman spends her savings rehabilitating injured raptors. Children organize to save species they will never encounter in the wild.

These acts of compassion are not rare. They appear everywhere, spontaneously, across cultures. Something in us responds to other living beings with genuine care.

Yet our species is dismantling the biosphere with unprecedented speed. We are driving what scientists call the sixth mass extinction. We are altering climate systems that took millions of years to stabilize. We are simplifying ecosystems beyond the point at which they could recover their former complexity.

How do these two realities coexist in the same creature?

I have spent several years exploring this question, drawing on peer-reviewed research in biological conservation, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and environmental science. The result is a nine-part essay series called The Innocence of Ignorance.

The series argues that most humans bear no malicious intent toward nature. Our destruction flows from ignorance, but not simple ignorance. It is ignorance maintained by cognitive biases shaped for ancestral societies and environments, by cultural narratives celebrating dominance, and by systems too vast to see from within.

The essays trace a path from diagnosis to transformation. They examine why our intelligence became dangerous, what thermodynamic and ecological realities constrain our choices, and what it would mean to mature from planetary destroyer to plain member and citizen of Earth’s community.

The essays are not a counsel of despair. Humans possess something unique: the capacity to understand our own limitations and consciously evolve our behavior. The transformation soon to be forced upon us will be difficult. It will be painful. But it represents not humanity’s diminishment, it represents our fulfillment.

The series builds on insights developed in my Earth in Transition books, but each essay stands alone.

[Read the Innocence of Ignorance series introduction and access all nine essays here.]

AI Comparison

Posted on February 2, 2025 by GarryRogers

For a project we are into, I compared results from latest available versions of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek on one of the project tasks. The results were similar, but DS was slightly better. And, before responding, DS lays out it’s preliminary thought process in conversational style that is entertaining verging on hilarious!

https://chatgpt.com
https://claude.ai
https://gemini.google.com
https://www.deepseek.com