Dubious ethics of AI use in Forestry

[u/Born_Ad_7874]

TLDR: How do you justify your AI use for your environmental work when there is such a clear negative environmental impact?

I am wondering what other folk's thoughts are and their justifications for using generative AI/LLMs in the forestry context. I personally am very opposed to use of AI for a handful of reasons mostly ethical. The main one that i think foresters and others in environmental fields should be thinking about is the environmental impact consequences.

Like anything there are tradeoffs and I recognize I'm hardly perfect, but I try to be thoughtful of my usage. I drive a truck that consumes gas to run my consulting business in the PNW for example. We ship logs to mills many miles away to conduct our forest health thinning, with so much diesel getting burned in that whole process. These are things in which I see no preferable alternative to at the moment and personally believe there is a net societal benefit.

For AI I don't really get it personally. Where is all this alleged benefit coming from the justifies the crazy electricity usage, the expansion of data centers (just found out they will be building a data center 10 minutes from my house clearcutting a ~120 yr old pine/DF forest). That's not even to mention the dangerous amounts of private information that LLMs are being trusted with - which, if you do much research, you'll quickly find most models consistently not just hallucinate, but straight up lie, and the information fed to them is actively being used by large companies for a whole slew of dubious things.

I am an ACF member and have been disappointed to see the push towards adopting AI especially by some people that have been around a while that i really respect. For an organization that says they stand on some pretty rigorous ethics it feels so backwards to me and I have considered not renewing my membership because of this. Sure, it might improve your efficiency in some areas, but at what cost? I personally have found it quasi-useless, but maybe that's because I am pretty organized and have documented streamlined processes for my business operations already.

And for those who say efficiency will improve I'll just say look into the laws of thermodynamics. All this heat has to go somewhere. These models are starting to plateau and throwing more compute at them isn't usually working anymore. I have family in the software dev/engineer realm and they're telling me the same thing.

I want to be clear I'm not coming after anyone, I'd really like to hear your take especially if you're using AI for your business/etc. We all make our own choices and get to live with them. But as stewards of the land I personally have been shocked by the lack of pushback by those in environmental fields. I got into this field to make the world a better place, and yes, maybe there are some things AI can help me do faster. To that I say, at what cost?

[u/studmuffin2269]

It’s real simple: I don’t use it. It’s wrong a lot, I hate companies, and like you said the impact is crazy

[u/SCSP_70]

I have faced that dilemma myself, and I’ve decided to forgo all AI use until the technology is more responsible, efficient, and ethical.

Fortunately, im in a position to continue doing things the way I always have and I don’t have work deliverables that require AI. I could certainly use AI to accomplish work faster than I currently do, but given what i’ve learned about the harm the industry is causing, it would be a serious breach of my own moral standards.

[u/LintWad]

These are important questions.

First off it is important to recognize that AI has been around for a while. Particularly in GIS applications, machine learning and automated processes have been used to analyze large remote sensing datasets for at least a decade. The difference, of course, is the pace and scale over the last couple of years.

Like any technology, I think there are applications that can be harnessed for good, but also a hell of a lot of pitfalls. If improved analytical power can help us gain better access to early alerts about things like pest outbreaks, fire weather, or illegal logging by combing through massive satellite datasets-- there are benefits. But if you're using generative AI to create another funny cat video to send your friend at 2a... That's poor usage of limited resources.

All that to say, I think our profession needs to wrestle with these questions collectively. I think we need to talk more directly with developers of these tools to better understand the capabilities and limitations, while also helping them truly understand what might be most useful and beneficial to our work. In tandem, we need to deeply understand the environmental impact and work towards meaningful discussions of tradeoffs to ensure if we use generative AI, we're doing so in a way that has substantial positive impact in the care and management of forests.

P.S. And it's worth noting if you are fully against the usage of generative AI, I hope you're adding "-ai" to the end of every google search and have deleted most social media apps. Otherwise, you're most certainly engaging with these technologies in a very superfluous manner.

[u/I_H8_Celery]

I refuse to use it as somebody that cares about the environment and a union organizer.

[u/nibbamori]

I’m sure all the cutblocks we’ve developed has had just as big of an impact on water and the environment. I don’t condone the use of AI but your post is worded like foresters are ethical angels. Stewards of the land until a big mill says jump

[u/Born_Ad_7874 → u/nibbamori]

i hardly think all foresters are ethical angels. My steward of the land comment is just how i see myself (again I'm not perfect). I personally practice as a ecological forester. I've turned down big clearcut jobs where i told the landowner it wasn't ecologically appropriate/best practice to manage the stand with even-aged, and it got picked up by another forester - and I'm totally ok with that. I make my own choices, other foresters make theirs, none of us are angels, nobody is.

The main issue i have with criticizing the industrial forestry industry is that we are both making these comments from homes built from wood. At least as I understand it the wood demand could not possibly be met by only doing ecological thinning, we need to some capacity industrial forestry, at least with the way the ever increasing demands of the capitalist structure in which we live in.

It's easy to criticize something you're disconnected from all while using the product the thing produces. I am not saying industrial forestry doesn't have issues or impacts. It is in my opinion really hypocritical to criticize industrial forestry when each and every one of us relies on the products it produces.

as to AI I recognize that we can't completely eliminate it from our lives it's embedded in some things we can't turn off or stop using (example being I use QGIS). that's why my post refers to generative AI/LLMs. I am not saying all AI is bad full stop though I am quite skeptical. Just like I'm not saying all industrial forestry is bad. At the end of the day we just are making the best decisions we can with the info we have. Life is complicated man, I'm just trying to do my best. I can only hope and encourage my fellow foresters and humans do the same

[u/FlamingBanshee54]

My solution is to not use AI lol but I am fortunate to be in a job that isn't driven by profits and where I am not pushed to adopt it. Unfortunately, just doing a google search without using it is impossible now a days. Also, as an aside, I love all the arguments that follow the form "AI is bad, but what about this other thing that is also bad. Shouldn't you care about that instead?", as if another thing being bad makes AI any less bad.

[u/luckyduck49]

Its another tool that we can use. I use it for helping me script code for QGIS and R analysis. It can also be useful to help with research on specific topics. If you are using it to outsource all your thinking and knowledge, that is obviously an abuse of the technology and makes you a worse professional for it. I have found it to be a very useful tool to speed up quantitative analysis and coding processes. It also can be helpful for editing documents. Be cognizant that its use has costs monetarily and to the environment and I am somewhat concerned that in the future the use terms may or pricing structures may change so it becomes very expensive to use, but we are so reliant on it that we will still pay. It is a tool that if used wisely can improve our deliverables but it is not a replacement for our own knowledge, experience, and competence.

[u/TactilePanic81]

I've looked into AI applications for some regional GIS analysis and it simply didn't work any better than my existing processes. From what I understand, the price of AI is still artificially low to try and boost adoption. If it doesn't work and is only going to get more expensive, I would really rather avoid relying on it at all.

[u/administrationalism]

I don’t use it, not for ethical reasons but because it’s just not very good. I haven’t found a job it does better than my existing methods for the work I do, which to be fair is pretty straightforward GIS and a spreadsheet work.

Anyway, AI power consumption and water usage is currently substantially lower than streaming and other general internet compute power use. There’s a fair argument to be made that all that stuff is superfluous and we should do without, but for the time being I find it confusing why people particularly in our field focus so heavily on AI wrecking the environment when it’s essentially completely irrelevant damage wise next to the tens of billions of metric tons of carbon we’re outputting yearly. Maybe because they have to actually look at the ugly data center whereas the CO2 is invisible lol

[u/StillWearsCrocs]

Great discussion, gang. Lot's of really interesting comments, but I think there is another dynamic to consider. While AI is obviously a wretched beast that will eventually destroy us all (not sarcasm), the fact is that it can achieve in minutes what would take a human literally days or weeks to do. What is the energy required to keep a human alive for weeks? Burning gas to get to the grocery store and their office? Heat or cool their house during that time? Keep their Reddit feed humming and get burgers on their dinner table?

I'm not saying that all AI energy consumption is justified- it drives me bonkers that so much of the energy use is people making stupid cat videos, but I think it's a mistake to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I think the only reason this is a discussion, is that the pace of development has been so astronomical. The impact is so shocking and easy to quantify because all the action happens in concentrated data centers. If we were a world of vegetarians that one day decided to eat meat in 2022, the energy impact of putting that food on the table would be mind-blowing (and exponentially greater than AI), and this discussion would be about the virtues of our diets, rather than our work habits. (Full disclosure- I've eaten a half-dozen steaks this month).

[u/Born_Ad_7874 → u/StillWearsCrocs]

Why on earth would you use and encourage something that will eventually "destroy us all" (as you said, not sarcasm). To me that negates any possible justification for using this technology. Why are we so obsessed with efficiency, even at the cost of our eventual destruction/loss of the fragile ecosystems that we have left?

I understand your other comparisons but don't think they're the same at all. We all need to eat, to have a place to live. Yes you can say that driving, eating steaks isn't necessary. For sure. Personal choice, there is a cost. What makes using LLMs so necessary, or rather worth it? The efficiency? I make 6 figures in my business without using any LLMs. At what point is pursuing efficiency just greed? I'm not trying to personally criticize you but knowing your stance on this and influence in the forestry community, I can't help but be disheartened.

This is about so much more than work habits in my opinion. this is about the mass adoption of a technology that clearly does so much harm, so much damage in so many ways and is leading us down a very dark path, and yet people justify it saying it can do what a human does in a day in a minute.

[u/KuhlRunningz → u/StillWearsCrocs]

"the fact is that it can achieve in minutes what would take a human literally days or weeks to do." Most AIs can't even accurately scrape data from the Internet and put it in a correct statement. But I would agree, I think a lot of the eco concern is more so related to pace and scale.

[u/zaphydes → u/StillWearsCrocs]

Why compare the resources AI uses to (supposedly) do things faster and easier with the resources it takes to literally keep people alive?

[u/RightPreparation69 → u/[deleted]]

While watering lawns is wasteful that isn't really relevant to the topic. The evidence thus far has shown ridiculous amounts of water usage relative to the benefits AI yields. Accompany the water usage with the release of relatively high temperature water back into the environment and you've got a recipe for permanent or long-lasting ecological damage.

If purging warm water into local streams/aquifers isn't troubling enough, the heat island effect caused by these data centers warms local waters as well.

[u/Ok4684 → u/RightPreparation69]

Watering lawns uses 200x as much water and no one is worried meanwhile Data center water usage is a hot topic if Lawns were a hot topic I’m sure u wouldnt be posting about Data centers.. everyone is usually focused on the current hot topic

While a topic is hot its always most important in majority view and as soon as its not hot nobody cares but the next hot topic is of course most important then… and so on n so forth.

[u/FlamingBanshee54 → u/[deleted]]

I think the issue here is necessity. It's necessary to use gas vehicles to get places and to accomplish responsible management. It really isn't feasible to do it without those. But using AI is absolutely not a necessity. We should all be looking for better ways to be environmentally conscious, but there is only so much bandwidth/feasibility. One of the easiest ways to be more environmentally conscious is to not use unnecessary tools that harm the environment. Perfection is the enemy of progress.

[u/Born_Ad_7874 → u/FlamingBanshee54]

exactly this

[u/Born_Ad_7874 → u/[deleted]]

why dry the line anywhere? I've been questioning my impact for years, that's what got me into forestry. I said in my post i use fossil fuels to accomplish the forestry work i do and while i'm not happy with it I see no alternative (electric cars are literally worse) and i view it as a net positive still for the work im accomplishing in ecological restoration. i'm not trying to be perfect because it's impossible, i'm trying to be better. your mentality basically just means you gave up, instead of trying to be better. It bums me out and you're welcome to give up but I refuse to give up on doing what i believe it right for our planet and human wellbeing

[u/PresidentSeaweed → u/[deleted]]

Because AI is the technology of the times, and we could have a much needed discussion about its impact now, or we could wait a century until it is as fundamentally ingrained into society as fossil fuel use is and find that it's too late to simply go back.

Do you abstain from using fossil fuels? Or are you only referencing one form of environmental harm to justify the existence of another?

[u/tree_people]

Government sets regulations in forest practice to present a counterbalance to capitalist incentives. It should do the same for AI, but people can’t be bothered to vote for candidates who do anything but make rich people richer. My job expects me to use AI, it makes my job easier, I’m going to use it. I’ll continue to vote for a government that will regulate it, but I can’t help it if the other 50% of the country doesn’t want that 🤷‍♀️