When it comes to the seemingly ever-increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI), a sentiment I’ve heard fairly often runs along the lines of, “It’s not that serious.”
Unfortunately, in a world where everything from pictures and videos to marketing, schoolwork, and even environmental mapping is transitioning to AI, it is that serious.
Impacts on the Environment
By now, I’d be shocked if anyone remains oblivious to the environmental impact of AI. To cool their computers, AI data centers use near-unimaginable amounts of water. An estimate from the UN Environment Program (UNEP) puts the global water consumption by AI-related infrastructure at nearly six times of what’s used by the entire country of Denmark.
While that alone is a stupefying statistic, it becomes a serious problem when contextualized with the fact that “a quarter of humanity already lacks access to clean water and sanitation.”
Beyond water use, AI data centers also rely on incredible amounts of raw materials. According to the UNEP, nearly 800 kilograms of raw materials are used to produce a single two-kilogram computer, and the microchips that power AI require rare-earth elements.
This alone likely wouldn’t be incredibly taxing to the environment, if it weren’t for the fact that most of these rare elements are mined using environmentally destructive tactics and exploit less developed countries.
Even with all of this, AI use still requires additional energy to function, which is drawn from burning fossil fuels, an act that produces greenhouse gases that lead to global warming and climate change.
The UNEP reports that a single request through ChatGPT consumes 10 times as much energy as a Google search. What’s more, AI data centers produce “electronic waste, which often contains hazardous substances, like mercury and lead,” according to the UNEP.
Impacts on Our Brains
AI is actively wreaking havoc on our environment, just as it’s starting to impact our brains. Andrew R. Chow’s TIME report on a recent MIT study states that “ChatGPT users… ‘consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.’”
The MIT researchers conducting the study had participants write 20-minute essays based on several SAT prompts, with one group using AI, another using a Google search, and the last using only their brains. They found that the group that used AI had low cognitive engagement and eventually resorted to copying and pasting the entire essay.
Chow’s article reports that “The group that wrote essays using ChatGPT all delivered extremely similar essays that lacked original thought.” Researchers used an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine to record and measure electrical activity in participants’ brains.
They found that, as Chow puts it, “The EEGs revealed low executive control and attentional engagement.”
The “Brain-Only” group showed the highest levels of neural connectivity, especially with markers showing “creativity ideation, memory load, and semantic processing.” This group was more engaged in their work and showed a greater inclination to claim and be satisfied with that work.
The group that used Google similarly had active brain functioning and higher satisfaction levels, an important distinction between the AI group. Many people stopped using Google and other search engines with the rise of AI, so this marked difference in cognitive performance levels between the two is an interesting departure.
In the simplest terms possible, the study found that people who used AI had lower brain activity and awareness of their essay than those who used Google searches or nothing at all.
Moving Forward
As AI use becomes increasingly prevalent in all aspects of life, I find myself terrified for the future of our world. I, like many others, observe peers using AI to get through their biology or engineering classes, teachers encouraging the use of AI in classroom discussions, and friends and family mentioning AI use in casual conversations.
With the abundance of information we have about AI, I can’t help but imagine a world where we not only destroy our own brains and the world around us but also deprive ourselves of water while doing it.
While this world may seem like a dystopian fantasy, it’s disturbingly close to manifesting, with the UN declaring that the world has entered a period of “global water bankruptcy” and that we’ve officially reached the point of no return in our global environment.
What frustrates me the most about this is the abundance of people who have seemingly collectively decided to ignore this information and continue as they are, despite the horrific reality playing out right in front of us.
I want to take this moment to say yes, it is that serious. Soon enough, we’ll be existing in a world where we have wrecked our minds and our world in favor of a few seconds of convenience and a slightly easier job.
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