Written by Pax Bilinski / News & Opinion editor and Lydia Styf / Staff writer
In this day and age, artificial intelligence is extremely prevalent in schools and our lives whether we like it or not. Many students use AI to complete homework or to start their essays for them. Some even use it as a replacement for Google.
Asking a trained robot to do your critical thinking for you is making your brain weaker. That’s not an exaggeration. Critical thinking is vital to deciphering false information and creating your own judgements. Studies have shown that using AI websites like ChatGPT and Gemini consistently have huge negative effects on the brains of users.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a study with individuals aged 18 to 39 and put them into groups to write essays over the span of several months. There were three groups: people using ChatGPT, people using Google, and people using no help from any website. The results showed that people who used ChatGPT got lazier with every new essay and were lacking in neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. So, they were lacking in creativity, language usage, and fell short with how the brain typically works while writing an essay.
Not only is AI harming the brain: it is also not fully reliable as it pulls information from any source from the internet, whether it’s true or not.
AI has been proven over and over to use false information in responses. When Google’s “AI overview” feature is used, it pulls any information related to the search. It takes every usable website and pieces the information together to give you a response. Sometimes, it’s misinformed. Other times, it’s completely unreadable.
It can also be used to create and spread false information. Anyone can create fake images or messages. Anything that is posted to the internet can be used as long as it’s related to the inquiry.
AI is harming the creative job market and the activity of creating art as well. Art is something that humans have perfected to take part in creation, and it is so valuable to the lives of people. However, these creative outlets and jobs are being compromised by a robot that steals data from real artists. AI steals artwork created by real, breathing humans and turns it into stolen slop.
It has begun taking over the writing, voice acting, visual art, graphic design and music industries, forcing people out of fields that they had to work for years to achieve at a professional level.
There are now AI musicians, actors, voice actors and artists at the professional level. Take Tilly Norwood for example. She is a completely AI-generated actress that was going to be signed to a talent agency. Similarly, the Velvet Sundown is a fully AI-generated band that has been gaining traction on Spotify.
If artificial actresses and musicians and a lack of critical thinking and constant misinformation aren’t what make you upset about the use of AI, the environmental effects will.
According to East Carolina University, just training an AI model has a carbon footprint of 626.2. Just to compare, manufacturing and fuel consumption of a car that is used throughout one lifetime has a carbon footprint of 126. Creating GPT-3 (one of ChatGPT’s models) consumed 1,287 megawatt hours of electricity and generated 552 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to 123 gas-powered cars driven for one year.
In 2023, data centers in the United States consumed 66 billion liters of water. With how much AI has grown in the past two years, we can simply assume that the numbers would be astronomical today. In 2015, the United States used 322 billion gallons of water per day. AI uses 5 million gallons per day, which is equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people. Just to compare, Sugar Creek and Brandywine Township make up a population of 19,000 as of the last census. AI has taken its water supply from citizens of the United States.
AI can be used as a tool, but it is not worth the environmental, physical and job market effects. It would be so much more beneficial to think things through yourself instead of relying on a machine. Humans have figured out ways to write, create art, and think for centuries. An advancement in technology does not mean it is a good advancement for the people.