Artificial Intelligence and Responsible Stewardship
Theodore Roosevelt never met a new machine he wasn’t curious about. He was the first president to ride publicly in an automobile and the first to submerge in a submarine — and, after leaving office, the first to go up in an airplane. He harnessed the newest media of his day, from motion pictures to mass-circulation magazines, to carry his ideas into every corner of the country.
He was also the president who protected roughly 230 million acres of American land. To Roosevelt these were never contradictions. Conservation did not mean refusing progress; it meant using resources wisely, so the generations that followed would inherit more than they were owed.
That is the spirit guiding artificial intelligence at the Library: embrace the tool, count its cost, and put it to work for something that matters.
Step up to a kiosk and ask Theodore Roosevelt a question. He answers in language drawn from his own writings, letters, and speeches — the most extensive written record of any president of his era. Tap a wristband and watch yourself appear in a photograph from the Badlands of the 1880s. Search a digital archive that brings together, for the first time, collections scattered across more than thirty institutions.
None of this replaces history. It opens the door to it. AI turns history from something visitors read about into something they take part in, meeting people where they are — a classroom in Fargo, a research library in Boston, or the floor of the museum itself.
Behind the scenes, AI makes the Library a stronger institution. Staff spend less time on repetitive administrative work and more on the mission, and a small team in a town of about 130 people serves a national audience.
Every AI interaction draws electricity, water, and computing power. The Library treats that not as a footnote but as a line item.
The Library is pursuing full Living Building Challenge certification, the most rigorous sustainability standard in the world. Unlike most certifications, it isn’t awarded on promises or projections — it is verified against twelve consecutive months of actual, metered performance. The electricity behind the AI experiences on campus is part of that calculation, inside the building’s energy budget rather than outside it.
The campus was designed to generate more renewable energy than it consumes each year, with AI-enabled experiences and staff tools included in that design from the start. Geothermal heating and cooling, on-site and off-site solar, and energy-efficient systems power the same experiences that bring Roosevelt to life. The same discipline applies to water: as tools for measuring AI’s water footprint mature, those findings fold directly into the Library’s Zero Water strategy.
Building With Responsible Partners
The Library builds its AI experiences with Microsoft and Google, partners that have made public, measurable commitments to reducing the environmental impact of artificial intelligence — from carbon-negative and water-positive goals to running on carbon-free energy and replenishing more water than they use.
A library devoted to conservation shares those goals, and works alongside its partners to advance them:
- Waterless data centers. Accelerating the shift to closed-loop and water-free cooling, so AI computing stops competing with communities for drinking water.
- Transparent accounting. Publishing the energy and water cost of AI workloads at a level institutions can use, so a footprint can be measured rather than estimated.
- Siting with intention. Locating AI infrastructure where renewable energy is abundant and water is not scarce.
Roosevelt believed the right response to a powerful new force was neither fear nor blind enthusiasm, but leadership. That is the standard the Library holds itself to, and the standard it seeks in everyone it works with.
The Four Zeros
The AI experiences on campus live inside a building designed around four commitments.
Zero Energy
Designed to produce more renewable energy than the campus consumes each year, through geothermal heating and cooling, efficient design, and on-site and off-site solar.
Zero Water
Ultra-low-flow fixtures and efficient building systems let the Library operate on a fraction of the water a conventional building requires.
Zero Carbon
Low-carbon materials, renewable energy, native prairie restoration, and sustainable transportation reduce emissions while increasing carbon sequestration.
Zero Waste
Waste treated as a resource and kept in circulation through reduction, recycling, and an on-site biodigester.