The Scariest Part About Artificial Intelligence

Between its water use, energy use, e-waste, and need for critical minerals that could better be used on renewable energy, A.I. could trash our chances of a sustainable future.

In both of my chosen professions—teaching and journalism—most discussion of artificial intelligence errs on the side of navel-gazing. It’s all about us. We worry that our jobs are over: Why should any company hire a writer—or any “creative”—if they can just plug a prompt into ChatGPT? Professors fret that students are using A.I. to write their papers, and asking what that means for the learning process. Should we even assign papers anymore? We who have spent our lives trying to cultivate our minds and those of the young go to art museums, where we are greeted by A.I.-generated installations. We fear that our professional woes reflect a philosophical problem: Is the human mind even necessary anymore?

If that sounds intense, well, it is! These concerns about the cultural effects of A.I. shouldn’t be written off, particularly given the risks of A.I. exacerbating misinformation, democratic dysfunction, and systemic racism. But they sometimes risk obscuring the more direct, physical problems with the technology. A.I. is not only robbing us of our livelihoods and depriving our lives of meaning: It puts our planet and its people under existential threat, for no good reason.