Designed to be Discarded: The Global E-Waste Problem

Due to the increasing use of electronics and planned obsolescence, electronic waste, or e-waste, is currently the fastest-growing stream of waste. The lack of proper disposal and recycling systems means that the toxic elements in discarded technology threaten human health and the environment.
Close-up of E-waste showing a large pile of obsolete computer parts, including graphics cards, motherboards, circuit boards, and electronic components awaiting recycling and responsible disposal.

“We all have a stake in our technological future” (Mark Coeckelbergh)

Digital Peace spoke with Mark Coeckelbergh, Belgian philosopher and leading expert on the ethics of AI and robotics. The interview explores topics such as the relationship between AI and religion, the threat of Big Tech on democracies, and the democratization of technologies.
Mark Coeckelbergh speaking about AI, democracy, and the growing power of Big Tech alongside server infrastructure and digital systems.

After the Noise, AI as a Development Issue

As AI rapidly transforms from a commercial product into core social infrastructure, existing regulatory and oversight systems are failing to keep pace with its societal impacts. This governance gap risks deepening global inequalities, particularly disadvantaging the Global South, and underscores the urgent need for international development institutions to treat AI as a development issue.
AI As Development Issue

EU AI Act Military Gap: Europe’s Regulatory Dilemma 

The EU AI Act is the world's first major rulebook for artificial intelligence, but it contains a massive "military-shaped" hole that could leave us vulnerable. By looking at how one specific legal exemption works, we can see how the technology used for war might end up bypassing the democratic checks and balances meant to keep us safe. 
EU AI Act

Palantir’s Manifesto Is A Threat To Democracy

Palantir's recently published manifesto represents the ideology behind many billionaires leading tech companies in Silicon Valley. What is the threat for democracies worldwide?
Palantir

The Cost of Becoming an AI Superpower

India’s push to become an AI powerhouse is not as weightless as it appears. Its expanding infrastructure may shift environmental and social costs onto vulnerable communities.
Photograph of the inside of a data center symbolizing Artificial Intelligence Inequality in India

The Growing Risks for Young People’s Mental Health and Cognitive Development

Social media outsourced attention, AI is now outsourcing thinking and feeling. But what does it mean for a generation growing up with machines shaping not just what they know, but who they might become?
Effects of AI on young people illustrated by teenagers using computers and digital technology in a classroom

The Rise of GriefTech and the Digital Afterlife

The technology to recreate the deceased has transitioned from speculative fiction to a tangible, multi-billion-dollar industry. Often labeled GriefTech or DeathTech, this sector is becoming one of the most dynamic areas of the modern technology economy.
Screenshot of a person in mourning holding red flowers at a gravesite, representing traditional grief in contrast to emerging GriefTech practices that digitally recreate the deceased.

Bitcoin is an Energy Hog: The Trouble with Cryptocurrency

Crypto mining, the process of creating, tracking, and protecting cryptocurrency, requires extensive resources and negatively affects surrounding communities. While only a small percentage of people own or use cryptocurrency, the consequences of maintaining it affect us all.
Cryptocurrency mining rig with multiple GPUs in a high-performance data center, used for blockchain processing and crypto mining operations.

The Hidden Cost of Conversational AI: The Social Disconnect

We are wired for connection from the very beginning. But conversational AI may be quietly reshaping how we turn to each other.
Child sitting alone on steps looking at smartphone, illustrating the social impact of conversational AI and digital loneliness

Food For Thought

Abstract black scratch-style illustration resembling a mushroom cloud explosion, evoking the oppenheimer test, drawn with chaotic charcoal-like lines on a light background.

The Oppenheimer Test

Every system reaches a point where its makers lose the ability to contain it. Oppenheimer faced it in 1945. Artificial intelligence is moving toward the same line, where control slips and responsibility spreads to those forced to live with the consequences.
Black ink sketch of a atlas figure under chaotic strokes, symbolising the weight of AI in warfare and the loss of human hesitation.

No Target, No Trigger, No Mercy

In 1943, a German pilot spared a shattered Allied bomber, choosing mercy where orders demanded execution. AI in warfare would not have paused. It would have scanned, confirmed, and fired, not from hatred but from code. Humans still draw fragile lines in war: a flag, a hand, a refusal. Machines do not see lines, only patterns, and once flagged as enemy, context collapses.
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