In the first talk, Dr. Rianne Riemens explores how AI's rapid expansion has led to consolidation of Big Tech's economic power alongside dramatic increases in carbon emissions and electricity use. Despite "green AI" promises from Big Tech companies, their decarbonisation plans are jeopardised by the massive infrastructural and energy investments needed to sustain AI growth. This talk unpacks the green myths, shifting power dynamics, and environmental dilemmas at the intersection of AI, sustainability, and energy.

In the second talk, Bjorn Beijnon examines how platform ecosystems cultivate users as "data subjects", subjects who willingly turn their lives into data while feeling in control of their choices. Through data profiles, feeds, and recommendations, platforms condition people to align their attention and actions with Big Tech's commercial interests. Drawing on critical theory and ethnographic research, this talk reveals how desire becomes measurable, governance ambient, and resistance infrastructural. With Dutch parliamentary elections approaching, the stakes are immediate: will platform power remain a private matter of design or become a public matter of governance?

The speakers

Dr. Rianne Riemens is a postdoctoral researcher studying Big Tech and Climate Futures at Utrecht University. She is part of the focus area Governing the Digital Society and a core member of the special interest group Greening the Digital Society. Her current research focuses on the relation between Big Tech, AI and energy, the cultural and political power of Silicon Valley actors, and EU policies on the green and digital transition. Previously, she was a PhD Candidate at Radboud University, where she wrote her dissertation Platform Earth: Ecomodernism in Tech-on-Climate Discourse.

Bjorn Beijnon is a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, and a lecturer at the Institute for International Business Studies, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. His work is centered on digital culture, critical data studies, and the socio-political implications of technological systems. In his PhD research he unpacks the power of big tech companies in contemporary surveillance cultures by examining subjectification through the lenses of datafication and platformisation. Currently, he investigates the possibilities and limitations of decentralised platforms in disrupting mainstream platform economies, with a focus on their ability to support community-driven practices, public values, and democratic participation. He also combines his research findings with his candidacy (#5) for the upcoming Dutch parliamentary elections for the political party Volt.

Riccardo Molin will be moderating the PEPTalk.