What has AI brought to 2024 Regarding its Effect on Our Planet and Human Originality?
“Can you write me an email to my boss?,” “Can you write me a birthday text I can send to a friend?”, “Can you write me this essay?” I am sure you have asked ChatGPT a question along these lines. The reality is much more than meets the eye, the prevalence of AI has significantly increased from the years of 2023 to 2024, in which I think many school and college students can relate to. The convenience of the usage of AI is extremely helpful in situations where it can reduce work. In fact, it has been beneficial in classrooms, helping students with material and subjects, helpful with note-taking and teaching concepts, all to the personalization of the individual.
Not only is it prevalent within schools, it is helpful with so many other factors amongst elderly populations as well. Many people use AI to help identify health issues and advice, those who work, to generate a script for a presentation, to plan a trip itinerary, and so much more. In fact, 100 million users of ChatGPT use that platform per week (Durante, 2025). The convenience of ChatGPT and other platforms may be accessible, easy to use, and in just a couple clicks on your keyboard to get exactly what one wants, right? But the devastating effects that follow the daily use of ChatGPT in 2024, shows us the dystopian reality and the unfortunate future that follows, as the impacts that AI holds on our planet is extremely destructive.
As the increasing usage of AI platforms like ChatGPT progresses, factors like the environmental sustainability and maintainability of AI’s development have been questioned. According to Scientific American, a science website, they claim that, “Microsoft’s AI is directly used to add more fossil fuels, which will release greenhouse gases when burned, to the market” (Coleman, 2023). According to the Yale School of Environment, they state that, “The mining and production of these metals used in AI hardware can lead to soil erosion and pollution. Many electronics are not properly recycled, leading to electronic waste that can cause further pollution.
The materials used in these devices can contaminate soil and water when not disposed of correctly”(Yao, 2024). With the effects of electronic waste and the emission of greenhouse gases, AI actually accounts for about 2.5 to 3.7 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions, which actually surepasses the amount percent contribution of the aviation industry (Cho, 2023). AI’s affected us environmentally in so many ways that we are not able to see with our eyes, it contaminates our oceans, pollutes our earth, and makes our blue skies foggier. A simple click of a button diminishes our planet, according to Columbia Climate School they state, “Most of a data center’s energy is used to operate processors and chips.
Like other computer systems, AI systems process information using zeros and ones. Every time a bit—the smallest amount of data computers can process—changes its state between one and zero, it consumes a small amount of electricity and generates heat. Because servers must be kept cool to function, around 40 percent of the electricity data centers use goes towards massive air conditioners. Without them, servers would overheat and fail” (Cho, 2023). Lastly, according to Harvard’s Business School, they claim, “Even putting aside the environmental toll of chip manufacturing and supply chains, the training process for a single AI model, such as a large language model, can consume thousands of megawatt hours of electricity and emit hundreds of tons of carbon. This is roughly equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of hundreds of households in America” (Weirman, 2024).
To approach this issue moving forward in 2025, and moving on from 2024, the alternatives to AI is just originality. AI doesn’t need to be used for everything, although it does give you quick detailed answers, and is easily accessible, it won’t hurt to type up the same information into google and search a bit, think about preserving just a bit more of the environment because you chose to be more vigilant and aware of the issues caused by the usage of AI. Be more original, not everything has to come from AI, many have become so comfortable with generating answers from AI, students complete their homework with AI, so many students are so desperate, that they use AI humanizer websites to prevent their work from getting flagged, and guess what, those humanizer websites use AI to improve AI.
It may be easier to use AI, but one can only debate and wonder, whether AI is worth all the damage it is doing to our planet, and how its prevalence in the past year of 2024 has affected us, and will continue to affect us going forward. Going into 2025, let’s be more mindful and help our planet and revert to the ways that we were before AI. Originality, imagination, and creativity is a skill of human brilliance that cannot be replaced by AI, after humans are the ones who have created it. Let’s not have it replace our beautiful ideas and allow it to kill our planet, sustainable living starts with the decisions made amongst humans, working towards it should be our goal.
By: Sunchana Sridharan
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