the hypocrite that I am… This image was produced my Microsoft Copilot

A few months back I submitted a “Letter to the Editor” to Fly Fisherman Magazine, Ross Purnell. I know Ross. Ross chose not to run it in the next issue. I trust it was simply because what I wrote was too long and there was just not enough space in the magazine. But, Ross didn’t get back to me on why. I believe it’s an important topic and clearly AI hysteria has made the issue wildly misunderstood. Here is what I submitted:

To: tightlinesflyfisherman.com
It was with great interest that I read, “How AI Threatens our Rivers” by Andrew Becker in the Aug-Sept issue. In my “day job” I have been involved in the construction of AI software for over 15 years and focused on the Ethics of AI in my writing and speaking for over a decade. With that said, might I suggest the article would have been more aptly named, “How Fly Fishers Threaten our Rivers.”

These Hyperscale companies are not making infrastructure investments by building these massive buildings in small cities all over the world. They are trying to meet demand. And honestly, they are not keeping up with our thirst for the AI based applications we use in our daily lives. I am the problem; so are you. When you shoot that trophy shot with your iPhone while standing in the river, that photo is sync’d to iCloud. iCloud runs the AI on that picture for many reasons including helping you to search it. Apple’s iCloud runs on the hyperscalers, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Any time you use Siri, you are using AI which adds the burden of compute cycles in the cloud. The same goes with an android phone and google cloud. When you make a purchase on Amazon, you are pressing the AI and electronic storage demands of hyperscaler, AWS. That free Gmail account you have? It’s free like a puppy. The cost is the AI compute and storage of Google Cloud and the AI run on the actual content of the emails. I could go on and on.

There are several organizations that track and rank the environmental performance of tech companies including the major hyperscalers. So, while pulling the “hypocrite card” on myself, I had Microsoft Copilot create a “top 100 environmentally friendly large tech companies” list. I was not surprised to find Microsoft, Amazon and even Meta on that list. I was not surprised to find Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI left off the list.

Since us fly fishers are not going to give up our smart phones any time soon, I suggest we press the tech giants that are not environmentally friendly.

Tim Huckaby, President, San Diego Fly Fishers