Artificial intelligence: the topic that has been impossible to escape. The rise of AI has certainly not been a quiet climb to the top, and now that big advancements are being made, it’s clear that AI is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Recent introductions of AI include ChatGPT, Gemini, Co-Pilot, and others. These new sites and sources have had an impact on every area of daily life, whether it be school, work, marketing, or even entertainment. But with all of the AI software spreading across the globe, I can’t help but ask, is it worth it?

I, like any other teen living in the age of ChatGPT, couldn’t help but think that it was the coolest new “get out of work free” ticket for my classes. I would ask it to explain math equations to me or write a short response that I didn’t feel like doing. As the year progressed, the school adapted to AI, deciding whether it would make life more convenient or be a sign of blatant cheating.

It seems like the more we learn about AI, the more divided the world becomes on the topic. After the initial novelty of ChatGPT wore off, I felt embarrassed to use AI. It felt cheap and almost unethical, but I didn’t really know why at that point.

Job loss

It started with silly generated images, then answering a homework question. Next, prompt responses were almost scarily accurate and precise, and before we knew it, millions of job losses followed.

According to Forbes, as of May 2024, nearly 65,000 job cuts were made with AI being seen as the biggest reason for it. CNBC News also reported that 60,000 more job cuts followed in November 2025, but with the government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics are unable to give their monthly report on what caused these layoffs.

While not all of these layoffs are due to AI impact, the portion of them that are due to AI have greatly impacted the workforce. According to CBS News, “ lists AI as one of the top five factors contributing to job losses in 2025.” [Challenger, Gray & Christmas]

Environmental impact

When people consider the harmful effects of AI, the first thing that comes to mind is usually misinformation or lack of creativity. While these effects are real, there is another major issue with AI that is often overlooked. This is the environmental footprint that AI is leaving behind.

The amount of resources and energy that AI uses is not a simple fact to overlook when using it. There are multiple factors to consider when looking at AI’s energy use, with one of them being what type of energy AI is taking. We then need to compare these factors with other ways that energy is being consumed and how it impacts the environment. Finally, we need to see the steps being taken that will combat the harmful effects of AI’s energy use.

So, what are ways that AI is using energy? Many basic AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini are housed in data centers. A data center is a physical building that houses many types of electronics like the microchips that are used to power AI! According to UN Environment Programme, not only is making this tech taking a harmful toll on the environment because of mining effects, but these data centers also produce substances like mercury and lead, while consuming mass amounts of water.

That’s a lot of information, but what are the repercussions? To compare, Congress Gov, reported in 2024, data centers accounted for 4.4% of the U.S. total energy consumption. 4.4% doesn’t seem too bad right?

Now let’s compare that to the Illinois total energy consumption. Well, Illinois accounted for 2.1% of total energy consumption in the U.S. in 2023. That is 2.3% more energy use than an ENTIRE state in 2023 alone. This is even before major AI microchips were being added to these data centers, consuming more energy. S&P Global claims that in 2025, the end of year predictions for data center energy usage are set to rise at least 16% for just this year alone, and higher for the future.

You might wonder, why should we be worried about the rise in overall energy consumption? Well, if we don’t slow our energy consumption soon, we might not be able to reverse the effects of global warming, not to mention the current problems like deforestation, habitat loss, and pollution.

Falling back on AI

Using AI as a search engine, a way to come up with ideas, and even to do our homework sounds convenient and time saving, but it’s creating serious problems. When someone puts in a prompt to an AI chatbot, the chatbot is going to give you the answer that it thinks is most popular, based on sources that it pulls from the internet. This creates two problems: lack of originality and reliable information.

Turning to AI to help you brainstorm ideas isn’t the worst use of the technology, but the more you do that, the less creative we become. The more that individuals and companies use AI to imagine ideas for them, the less originality we see. In a study done at University of Pennsylvania, it was found that only 6% of AI responses are unique, compared to 100% of human responses.

This statement also goes for using AI as a way of doing your work for you. If we are only doing our homework by pasting it into a chatbox and copying the answers down, we are not learning anything. We are simply just looking at that information and transforming. We are not absorbing it and definitely not learning from it.

On the other hand, what if you’re just using AI to answer a simple question you had? Replacing it with Google or whatever search engine that you frequently use? Well it seems like that isn’t perfect either. In a study conducted by Columbia Journalism Review, AI chatbots often give falsely confident wrong answers for questions that they can’t find the definitive answer for. When asked to give citations for the answer they had just given, the chatbot would often say they “could not locate the article”.

These incorrect responses are often interpreted as true because of the language the chatbot uses in its responses. For example,“most likely,” “however,” or “I can’t find the exact text; however this is what else I could find on the topic…,” are some of the go-to phrases that bots use. Along with innocent answers, the study also found that the chatbots were even more likely to incorrectly cite a source, or not include it at all.

AI “therapy”

If you are a regular Instagram user, you might have noticed their new addition of character AIs. However, Instagram is not the first to create this concept. In fact, AI chat boxes are not a new thing, but with the advancements being made, these character chatbots are becoming more normal to use.

“AI psychosis” happens when someone becomes attached to the AI chatbot they are talking to, leading to users believing that the chatbot is in love with them or that it’s a “god-like” entity. In a report by Psychology Today, “AI chatbots may inadvertently be reinforcing and amplifying delusional and disorganized thinking”.

The worst part about AI psychosis is that AI is not programmed to recognize unhealthy behavior that someone with mental health issues could be displaying, and AI is not programmed to respond to these issues at all. In fact, AI is programmed to mirror the user’s language and tone. This means that if a person displaying mental health issues and using self-jeopardizing language tries to consult in AI, they will be met not with insight, but instead conversation that further feeds into the issue.

How to combat AI

With all the harm that AI is doing, why is it even around? AI obviously isn’t all harmful, and it’s definitely not going to cause a “robot takeover”. AI can help save many lives with the medical advancements it is making and it is also being trained in natural disaster pattern recognition! What I want to say is that AI is like a baby right now; it’s developing and has a long way to go.

We cannot put all our trust into AI and we cannot ignore its flaws either. What countries are already beginning to do, and I hope will continue to do, is create laws and limitations around the abilities of AI and what it has access to.

As everyday consumers, we can also help by limiting our AI usage, therefore limiting energy usage. And please remember, AI is not your therapist or your personal search engine. Just doing those simple steps will help slow the AI takeover while we figure out how to create this technology in a less harmful way.