It may be time to revisit and expand my 2017–2019 articles. Back then I argued that we were willingly building the digital equivalent of Soylent Green - feeding an invisible machine with our lives. Today, Artificial Intelligence has transformed that warning into something far more tangible.
(11) Are we the new Digital Soylent Green?
"We all worry about protecting our privacy, but surprisingly, we give it up daily without a second thought. We are providing access to every aspect of our personal and business lives to private companies at a level of intrusion that the Security Services would be hard-pressed to achieve. We allow this data collection from smart speakers, smart thermostats, doorbells, cameras, our phones and so much more. You don't even have to sign up or directly interact anymore. Simply being nearby, appearing in someone else's photo, or having your voice captured can contribute to your digital identity growing in the cloud."
For years we've been told the new gold is data.
Now AI has turned that gold rush into the largest transfer of personal information in human history.
The greatest transfer of wealth is rapidly becoming the greatest transfer of human knowledge, behaviour, memories, relationships and private lives ever assembled.
AI doesn't simply require electricity - it requires us.
Every search. Every email. Every photo. Every GPS coordinate. Every voice recording. Every security camera. Every medical record. Every purchase. Every conversation. Every smart device. Every click.
Every digital breadcrumb becomes another AI meal.
The discussion surrounding AI data centers usually focuses on what they consume:
- Electricity.
- Water.
- Land.
- Rare earth minerals.
- Steel.
- Concrete.
- Copper.
- Fibre infrastructure.
Those are extremely valid concerns.
But they are only secondary resources.
The primary resource being consumed is EVERY ONE OF US - at an unprecedented scale.
Without an endless stream of new information, AI cannot continue 'learning', profiling, predicting and 'influencing' - Nudging - Persuading - Manipulating... Ultimately controlling.
Technology is increasingly designed to prevent your offline control of your personal data.
- Cloud-first.
- Subscription-first.
- Always-connected.
- Automatic backups.
- Smart homes.
- Smart cars.
- Smart appliances.
- Smart cameras.
- Smart watches.
- Smart assistants.
- 'Dumb users...'
Everything...
- is another sensor.
- is another data source.
- is another way to feed the beast.
The more data AI consumes - the more accurately it models you.
The more accurately it models you - the more effectively it predicts you.
The more effectively it predicts you - the easier it becomes to influence your decisions.
The more valuable those predictions become - the greater the demand for even more data.
It is the ultimate technological self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Feed AI more data.
- AI appears more capable.
- More capability demands more data centers.
- More data centers demand more infrastructure.
- More infrastructure demands more data.
The cycle feeds itself.
Ironically, as AI infrastructure expands, offline ownership appears to become increasingly expensive while cloud services become ever more attractive.
- Local storage.
- Enterprise hard drives.
- High-capacity SSDs.
- Memory.
- Professional GPUs.
These have all experienced periods of high demand and constrained supply as hyperscale computing has expanded globally. Meanwhile, the devices that generate the data—phones, smart speakers, smart cameras, connected appliances and wearable technology—remain relatively affordable and increasingly capable of monitoring every aspect of daily life. Coincidence?
The message is subtle:
- Don't store it yourself.
- Upload it.
- Sync it.
- Share it.
- Back it up.
- Let someone else manage it.
Once your life exists in the cloud, it becomes searchable, analyzable, categorizable and ultimately trainable.
Not just by humans.
By machines.
When I purchased a 22 TB standalone hard drive in June 2025 to preserve evidence relating to ongoing concerns in Alberta care homes, it cost between approximately $250 and $350.
Around the same time, I purchased multiple 256 GB microSD cards for about $22 each to be used in surveillance cameras installed, with residents' consent, and at my own expense, to help protect vulnerable care home residents.
Today, comparable storage products are significantly more expensive (four or more times the price) and, depending on market conditions, sometimes difficult or impossible to obtain. Capacity, memory and high-performance computing hardware increasingly compete with the demands of AI infrastructure.
- Coincidence?
- Market forces?
- Strategic investment?
Whatever the explanation, the practical result is the same.
The economics increasingly favour keeping your information online rather than under your own control.
AI data centers are not simply consuming unprecedented quantities of electricity, water and land.
They are consuming humanity's collective memory.
- Our conversations.
- Our relationships.
- Our habits.
- Our mistakes.
- Our creativity.
- Our identities.
- Our lives.
Every day, we willingly feed the system with another search, another photograph, another recording, another location, another interaction.
Then we wonder why AI seems to know us so well.
This isn't simply about technology.
It's about dependency.
- The more we feed AI - the more AI needs feeding.
- The more AI knows - the more power it acquires.
- The more power it acquires - the harder it becomes to live outside the system.
"You will own nothing and be happy."
When it comes to your digital life, many of us are already halfway there.
Not because someone took it from us.
Because we uploaded it ourselves.
Welcome to the Brave New Online World.
Where Digital Soylent Green...
...is people.
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Don't believe me though. Although this article was based on a framework I wrote and primed with my previous article and facts (see below)… the final product was AI produced including the title banner. Irony?
The above AI version was checked for grammar, spelling, accuracy and formatting only.
"Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a, a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at." (CD Bale - Roxanne)
The raw prompt for this article is below. Can you see what AI excluded from the original prompt? It is telling in it's own right.
From Hallucinations to Manipulations - AI or A-Lie?
Update the following to create a hard-hitting update to the linked article explaining how AI Data centers are consuming many resources beyond just water and electricity while consuming data at a level unprecedented in human history.
Digital Soylent Green Is People!
It may be time to update my 2017-2019 articles to cover the self-fulfilling prophecy of manipulating people to feed the beast that is AI.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-new-digital-soylent-green-dave-dickson-
“We all worry about protecting our privacy but surprisingly we give it up daily without a second thought. We are providing access to every aspect of our personal and business lives to private companies at a level of intrusion that the Security Services would be hard pressed to achieve. We allow this data collection from smart speakers, smart thermostats, door bells, cameras, our phones and so much more. You don't even have to sign up or directly interact anymore. Just being in the vicinity or having your image or voice uploaded can contribute to your digital presence forming in the 'cloud'.”
The greatest wealth transfer in history becomes the greatest transfer of personal data in history.
AI needs feeding with online data. So, big tech creates data centers that make it impossible to keep your data offline.
The more data AI consume, the more it knows about you.
The data AI has access to, the more storage and memory it has to have.
More online data, more data centers.
The more AI knows about you, the easier it is to manipulate you.
The more we feed AI, the more we need to feed AI…
Offline secure private data disappears and AI has access to 'everything, everywhere all at once'.
The ultimate technological self-fulfilling prophecy - AI in control, because we fed it what it needed.
This is not a hallucination, but it is feeding some of the greatest and dangerous hallucinations ever.
All the talk about AI data centers seems to focus on secondary resources they are gobbling up. Power, water, land… Although this is a significant concern, there is a piece missing which I touched on many years ago... the why – and the how. We happily give up our personal data daily for convenience, while streaming privacy into the void.
AI access to data means more detailed profiles and more manipulative, targeted control. How do you get people to feed the beast more? At the start it was social media driving the data but as more people generated more data, they started storing it offline for their own privacy.
This was starving the beast with cheap storage & memory.
Answer... take all the resources for cloud AI accessible data even if there appears to be no demand.
Build it and the data will come.
AI data centers are consuming resources for future orders of memory, GPU's and storage to the point that supply and demand has mane offline storage impossible for most. Just as storage needs grow for local users, it becomes unattainable.
Less than a year ago I purchased a standalone 22GB drive to store evidence related to ongoing abuse and worse in Care Homes in Alberta.
At the time I bought a number of 256GB microSD cards for surveillance cameras in residents' rooms (at their request and my cost) for their protection. That 22GB drive in June 2025 was selling between $250 and $350 which was not considered cheap at the time. That same drive now sells for almost $1,000 if you can even find one in stock.
The 256GB microSD cards cost around $22 each in a pack of 2. Now they sell for over $80 each. Memory has done the same as well as GPU's. Effectively, new hardware for normal people is becoming unattainable.
Strangely, the devices capturing all that data - your 'smart' devices… stayed affordable, subsidized and ever more capable of monitoring your every move - in the ever growing data center landscape.
“You will own nothing and be happy” When it comes to your digital life, as you feed the beast, you are already there.
It's a Brave New Online World
