Definition
Extractivismo Computacional (Computational Extractivism) names the pattern by which the environmental and material costs of training and running frontier AI systems are imported by the Global South, while the economic and capability benefits are exported to the regions that own the models. The footprint is local; the benefit is not.
Lineage
The term extends a consolidated Latin American academic tradition on extractivism (Gudynas/CLAES 2009; Svampa 2013; Acosta; Ricaurte 2022) and applies it, for the first time as a named frame, to the computational infrastructure layer that sustains artificial intelligence.
Provenance
Coined by AIEONME Foundation in April 2026, within the AI Term of the Day series.