I think, by this point, we are all well-versed in AI usage.
Having said that, I don’t think all of us understand the consequences of using AI, both personal and environmental ones (partly because of big tech corporations silently covering their footprints). And so, this article contains pretty much everything you need to know about AI as a student and why I think you should hate it.
Over the course of the past 4 years, AI technology has progressed to unfathomable heights. Nowadays, it seems almost impossible to find an industry that does not incorporate AI in its operations. Just the other day, I was extremely shocked to find out that a website from my childhood, typing.com, an education site meant for young kids, now uses AI to generate passages for users to practice typing. That seems a bit overkill in my opinion.
Don’t get me wrong, AI certainly has its positives. For instance, AI is revolutionizing the medical world through advances in medical imaging analysis, personalized medicine for individual patients, predictive analytics, etc. Lung cancer, the most common type of cancer in both men and women in the United States, uses AI computer models to detect early-stage symptoms, before human experts can see any changes, significantly increasing survival rates. But the problem isn’t AI outperforming and replacing advanced human technologies; the problem is AI replacing natural, human critical thinking and ideas. Or, even worse, it’s directly affecting the future of the planet and our survival as a species.
As tech companies race to monopolize the AI market, the number of data centers is multiplying at an alarming rate. These data centers house computing systems that tend to overheat since they require so much energy to run. The current solution to cooling these systems down is to pump cold, fresh drinking water between them through large, overhanging pipes.
However, since so many people use AI every day, these data centers quickly became the primary users of the Earth’s fresh, drinkable water by a long shot. A single data center can consume millions of gallons of water annually, which is comparable to the water use of a town with up to 50,000 people.
Not to mention, around 80% of the water used in data centers evaporates before it can be recycled, further depleting our already minimal and limited supply of drinkable water on Earth.
According to Microsoft’s 2022 annual report, asking ChatGPT-3 10-50 questions consumes up to 500 mL of fresh water.
In Dallas, Oregon, Google’s three data centers average about 550,000 gallons of water per day, which is a quarter of the city’s entire water supply. Regrettably, the situation is only getting worse.
In fact, Amazon, an American multinational technology company, has just invested up to 100 billion dollars to build AI data centers around the world, with one of these locations being Santiago, Chile, which is already a water-stressed city.
Building a data center there will allow Amazon to be given priority to the same reservoirs that supply drinking water to the people who live there.
Additionally, AI also contributes to the rising electricity prices through its excessive energy consumption, putting more stress on low-income families near the locations of these data centers.
Now, even if AI were only used for advancing critical medical technologies, it would still not excuse the environmental issues that have worsened up to this point.
Annoyingly, it seems that people have been using AI for the simplest of tasks. It seems almost normal to turn to AI chatbots for cooking recipes or even emotional support.
While AI is extremely harmful to the environment, it is also not a reliable source of information, pulling statistics from shady websites and containing bias towards the user.
This year, ChatGPT servers have been down several times, and each time it happened, online platforms, such as TikTok, overflowed with people jokingly saying they couldn’t complete the simplest of tasks or that it felt like they were losing their best friend.
This is the part that scares me the most. People aren’t just losing their critical thinking ability; they are willingly losing their ability to think at all in the name of convenience.
Some AI users need to realise that chatbots are not your friends; they’re a machine that is designed to do whatever it can to keep you entertained. If living in a world where people can’t think for themselves doesn’t scare you, it should, because that sounds like the start of a dystopian film to me.
Presently, whenever I see an artist or designer showing off their artistic creations and noting the amount of work that went into the process online, I’d always see at least one user declaring that “AI could do much better” and that the artist “wasted their time,” especially if the artist is a beginner. What?
There was never a survival-based need to produce art or music.
Artistic expressions are meant for entertainment, for personal enjoyment, for connection, or as a statement of how the artist perceives the world. The definitive meaning of human existence has long passed basic survival.
Just because using AI to generate images is much easier than learning to draw, that doesn’t mean we completely abandon artistic expressions.
In a way, the development of AI in our daily lives also reveals an underlying problem in our society: the need for simplification and convenience.
As cliché as it may sound, sometimes, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. We don’t create art because we need to, but because the process is enjoyable, and at the end, we receive a product that stands as a testament to our creative humanity.
If you’re too focused on getting to the destination and don’t stop to smell the flowers once in a while, it makes it less meaningful when you finally get there.
Yeah, sure, the view at the top of the hill is nice and all, but it would certainly be more beautiful to someone who actually did the work to get there, compared to someone who just took a personal helicopter there, wouldn’t it? (An environmentally destructive personal helicopter at that!)
The destination may be your point of achievement, but the journey is where you truly learn and discover who you are and what you like as a person.
That piece of art you made might not be the most perfect and jaw-dropping artwork humanity has ever seen, but it’s proof of your dedication and a physical memory timestamp. This is an even more important concept for young kids to understand, especially in a school system.
If AI is so damaging to adults, then imagine the impact it might have on young, developing children.
AI is not being used as a tool to revolutionize learning; it is being used by students so that they do not have to think at all.
Our next generation can not learn by being spoon-fed every piece of information.
How shall they develop their own voice when AI speaks for them? Who would be our next generation of innovators and leaders when all the children learned by following the instructions of AI?
They are losing their passion for knowledge and missing out on the most beautiful part about human existence, just because no one taught them how to properly use AI technology.
As a High School student, if my former middle school self were handed an AI chatbot, would I let myself use it for homework?
No, because although it took more time and effort, the process of researching and brainstorming allowed me to discover my interests and become an imaginative person.
But, at that young age, would I have taken advantage of AI in the moment, without all the knowledge that I have in the present day?
Yes, I 100% would have. The accessibility and lack of regulation around AI should be addressed, because if it doesn’t, we’re either heading towards a dystopian future or no future at all.
So there you have it, this is why I hate AI, and why I think you should too.