What do you mean has apologized? You want to tell me that Google did not have the sense to think about what they were doing before? What they did? Like, you want to tell me that a company with individuals that are leading, quote-unquote, the world of technology, you want to tell me that they didn’t have the cognition to foresee the fact that their actions were disruptive and illegal? You want to tell me that that is really what happened, and they apologized afterwards? Nah, that should not go left unchecked whatsoever. Whatsoever. Whatsoever. If I was the country, if I was the government of Finland, I would literally remove Google from ever doing business there. And that is only if the country genuinely does value nature in the ways in which they say they do so. For example, even having data centers on the ground and things like that, and Finland being one of the Scandinavian countries, and it’s always about, like, relationship with nature and whatnot. If you want to tell me that this country has not given any penalties to this company, they’re just allowing them to do whatever they want, really.

SHS – Human First | Consciousness, Technology & Continuity

I approve Greenpeace UK’s message, and I want to expand on something that we have been investigating across different industries, technological developments and corporate decisions.

Google has cleared an estimated 250,000 trees in Finland for a data centre development, with environmental assessments still incomplete when the clearing took place.

And I find this particularly revealing when we connect it to everything else happening in the technology industry.

We’ve been discussing companies such as Barclays cutting thousands of jobs while increasing their reliance on AI. We’ve examined the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of interconnected digital infrastructures, the surveillance capabilities embedded in everyday devices, and the growing authority being handed to technological systems that even their developers are still learning to understand, secure and control.

Now we’re destroying the very nature that sustains human intelligence to expand the infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence.

And we’re calling that progress?

What I find particularly concerning is not technology itself. It’s the consciousness of the people making these decisions and the extraordinary fragmentation of responsibility involved.

One company sees an opportunity to reduce employment costs. Another sees an opportunity to collect more data. Another sees an opportunity to expand computing capacity. Another sees land, forests, electricity and water as resources for technological expansion.

But who is examining the entirety of what we’re creating?

Who is accounting for the humans displaced, the ecosystems disturbed, the resources consumed, the vulnerabilities introduced and the dependencies humanity is developing?

Because these are not separate consequences. They’re all interconnected parts of the same system.

We’ve created an economy where corporations can calculate the financial benefits of replacing human labour but struggle to demonstrate the full human consequences.

Where technology companies can celebrate artificial intelligence while treating naturally occurring intelligence, biodiversity and ecological infrastructure as obstacles to technological expansion.

Where privacy is increasingly exchanged for convenience, autonomy for automation, and sustainability for projected profitability.

And I’m supposed to regard this as intelligent development?

Intelligence is not merely the ability to produce something. It’s also the capacity to understand what that creation will affect, what it depends upon, what it displaces and whether its existence contributes to the continuity of the greater whole.

An artificial intelligence that requires the destruction of natural systems to expand its capacity should immediately raise questions about the intelligence guiding its development.

I’m not arguing that all technological infrastructure is unnecessary or that AI cannot contribute to humanity.

I’m questioning why its development is being permitted to outrun our collective responsibility to the very reality that makes it possible.

Look at Finland. Look at the proposed Google data centre in Essex, where conservationists are fighting to protect habitats supporting rare species, including the shrill carder bumblebee.

We’re not simply talking about electricity bills and corporate investments. We’re talking about living systems that cannot be recreated simply by rebuilding infrastructure or planting a few replacement trees.

A forest is not a collection of interchangeable objects. It is an interconnected living environment developed over time.

And this brings me back to the founding question of the Universal Bar™:

Does this protect continuity?

Because if technological progress diminishes human autonomy, removes livelihoods without adequate social provision, introduces dependencies that societies cannot independently govern, and compromises the ecological systems that support life, what exactly are we measuring when we celebrate its success?

The profitability of the company?

The speed of its expansion?

The sophistication of its machinery?

What about the condition of humanity and Earth after that expansion?

At SHS – Human First, our foundation is the recognition of nature as the basic floor of creation. We don’t create outside nature. We create from within it, using what already exists to bring something else into existence.

And that means creation comes with responsibility for what it transforms.

Foreseeability. Initiative. Prevention.

Not destruction, apology, compensation and repetition.

I want a technological future where our creations demonstrate the intelligence we claim to possess. Where technology develops alongside human capability rather than unnecessarily replacing it. Where our natural environment is treated as foundational infrastructure rather than expendable territory.

Where we stop congratulating ourselves for what we can build and start examining the entirety of what building it costs.

Because technological advancement without conscious organisation is simply an acceleration of whatever behaviours, priorities and systems already exist.

And if those priorities are extractive, technology will only make extraction more sophisticated.

Artificial intelligence should be evidence of humanity’s intelligence, not an excuse for humanity to abandon it.

We are here to be the generators. But we must be conscious of what we’re generating, what we’re consuming, what we’re preserving and what we’re leaving for everything that comes after us.

Progress should expand the conditions for life, not make life pay for the conditions of progress.

— SHS – Human First