Generative AI is a greater risk than reward

Generative AI is sending society backward, not forward. 

Proponents of generative AI tend to claim that it is a tool in the same way a calculator is. While it may seem that way to the average person who doesn't want to spend time writing their own emails, generative AI is a much larger beast with much greater capacity for harm than the humble calculator.

That harm starts with the planet. On average, generative AI uses about a bottle of fresh water for every 100-word prompt. That adds up, especially with how ads for programs like ChatGPT and Gemini are popping up on every street corner — literally, as downtown Columbus currently has at least two ChatGPT billboards within a mile of each other. Generative AI is becoming commonplace, but it is consuming our natural resources like nothing before it.

Data centers are also cropping up everywhere to maintain the speed at which AI use is growing. Not only are they using obscene amounts of water and energy, but they are also taking these resources away from the people who happen to live near the data centers. Data centers are frequently built in or near low-income and predominantly Black neighborhoods, such as Boxtown in south Memphis.

Boxtown residents are being bombarded with pollution from the new xAI data center, and there is essentially nothing they can do about it. There is nowhere else they can afford to go, so they are forced to remain there as their quality of life and health diminish and emergency asthma attacks increase.

According to a new study by MIT, it seems likely that consistent use of generative AI is also harmful to cognition. The students in their study who used ChatGPT showed consistent underperformance compared to their peers. This is especially concerning when many schools are rapidly jumping on the AI bandwagon and encouraging, or even forcing, their students to use it.

Of course, the pervasiveness of AI greatly benefits those who are profiting from it. It's no surprise that the richest people in the world are the ones who are pushing their chatbots on everyone, such as Elon Musk. Follow the money; It will always be “follow the money."

Generative AI is bad for the planet, bad for our health, and bad for our brains. If we truly want to move forward as a society, we will find better solutions that help us improve ourselves instead of becoming dependent on technology that pushes us back.

---