The Mirage of Immortality

Heidegger's haunting question—"What is it to be?"—takes on new urgency as AI promises to transcend human limits. Transhumanist fantasies of mind-uploading and digital immortality seduce with visions of eternal life, yet they betray a profound discomfort with mortality. Buddhist teachings on impermanence and Kierkegaard's "sickness unto death" remind us that the acceptance of finitude is central to meaning. To erase death is to erase the urgency that fuels love, art, and justice.

The danger is not just philosophical but material. AI's environmental toll—the ravenous energy consumption of data centers, the strip-mining of rare earth metals for semiconductors—accelerates the very ecological collapse it claims to solve. The cloud, that ethereal metaphor, is grounded in a network of servers guzzling water and spewing carbon. Training a single large language model emits more CO2 than 100 homes consume in a year. This is not progress but a Faustian bargain: trading Earth's vitality for digital delusions of control.

A sustainable future demands that we anchor AI in the physical world. Taxing the carbon footprint of AI development could fund renewable energy grids. Prioritizing models that aid climate resilience—predicting wildfires, optimizing sustainable agriculture—over those that drive mindless consumption. And perhaps most crucially, rekindling reverence for the mortal and the ephemeral. A sunset, a handwritten letter, a child's laughter—these cannot be replicated, and that is their power.