Artificial intelligence is a tool many students use to better their academic success. These uses include generating notes from lecture recordings, summarizing complex topics and even doing their assignments. While this may seem ideal, AI may do more harm than good.
As students rely on AI to do assignments and busy work for them, they will never gain the work ethic and occupational skills required for college or a career. They will get used to having work done for them, potentially leaving them unable to complete tasks like a three-page essay on their own. A lack of work ethic could make maintaining a job or staying in college difficult, creating challenges in future daily life.
AI can also be used to make art. While many argue that AI makes ‘art more accessible,’ it actually diminishes the value of human creativity. One of the beauties of art is the raw, human emotion that gets put into it.
“AI is taking away the jobs of many potential great artists, and could disencourage someone who could be the next Picasso.” student-artist Irene Ruiz-Nunez said. “The ability of large companies to create art in the snap of a finger gets rid of job opportunities for many artists including graphic designers, music composers and animators.”
Another concern is AI’s impact on the environment. AI systems requires significant energy, which generates mass amounts of heat and consumes water to cool the equipment.
Author Leland Chen on Medium states “ChatGPT’s total daily water use may exceed 500,000 to 1 million liters globally.” That is about 83 times the amount a family of four uses in a month. High water consumption and energy use could threaten ecosystems, biodiversity and contribute to global warming.
AI is a powerful tool, but more often results in harm rather than good, whether it is intentional or not. Ultimately, the use of AI should be made less common than it is. The first step to doing so is banning the use of AI in school, and making AI inaccessible to the general public. As artist Nunez states, “We have to take initiative before we see more AI created pieces, rather than human.”
