Artificial intelligence is transforming our world, and consuming it at an unprecedented speed. While marketed as ethereal, the cloud-powering AI casts a vast and resource-intensive shadow, drawing on land, energy, water, minerals, and labor. With tech giants building data centers the size of Manhattan and climate targets slipping, we need to understand what the cloud is, where it operates, and how we can respond to it.

This talk provides a framework to look beyond your AI prompt. We will trace the often invisible and overlooked digital infrastructure that make it run; track the outsourced resource flows across territories; surface the uneven power relations that make the human and non-human extraction possible; and all the way to its potential post-human aftermath. You’ll leave with tools to map your own cloud, and the critical lens to begin to imagine a more just and sustainable digital future.

Yiqiu Liu is an urbanist, architect, and research coordinator for the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) project "The Production of Cloud: Territorial and Architectural Strategies for AI’s Socio-Environmental Footprint. "She co-coordinates the project with Milica Topalović, which explores how to theorise, design, and govern AI cloud infrastructure across Switzerland, the United States, and China.

She received her doctorate from the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich (2023) and holds both a BA and an MA in Architecture from Southeast University, Nanjing. Her research focuses on political ecology, state space, and urban China, with a particular focus on investigating contemporary Beijing through the framework of extended urbanization.

Yiqiu is also a practicing architect and urban designer with experience across continents. She has led several award-winning projects with Christian Kerez, received two 2024 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, and frequently consults public and private stakeholders on spatial development in Asia and Europe.