In a novel protest against the environmental impact of artificial intelligence, approximately 50 residents of Quilicura, a municipality on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, spent Saturday operating a fully human-powered chatbot system. The 12-hour demonstration project, dubbed Quili.AI, processed over 20,000 global requests while deliberately avoiding the instant responses characteristic of conventional AI systems like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini.
Instead of algorithmic processing, volunteers working from a community center manually responded to queries, with image generation requests taking approximately 10 minutes to complete. When an Associated Press reporter requested an image of a ‘sloth playing in the snow,’ the system returned a hand-drawn pencil sketch of a cartoonish sloth clutching snowballs after a noticeable delay.
The initiative, organized by environmental group Corporación NGEN, aimed to spotlight the hidden environmental costs associated with AI data centers concentrated in the Quilicura region. Lorena Antiman, the project coordinator, stated: ‘The goal is to highlight the hidden water footprint behind AI prompting and encourage more responsible use.’
The human-operated system excelled at responding to culturally specific queries, such as recipes for Chilean sopaipillas (fried pastries), by leveraging local knowledge. When volunteers lacked immediate answers, they collaboratively sought information within their community rather than generating fabricated responses.
This demonstration occurs against the backdrop of Chile’s severe decade-long drought, which experts link to recent devastating wildfires. The campaign highlights ongoing debates about the substantial resource consumption of AI infrastructure, particularly the massive water requirements for cooling data center computer chips. Major tech corporations including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have established or planned data centers in the Santiago region, with Google facing legal challenges over water usage concerns despite claiming its Quilicura facility is ‘the most energy efficient in Latin America.’