In 2025 I retired from academic/teaching work at a small Liberal Arts college. I taught Data Science including Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning but was first introduced to AI in the late 1970s while an undergraduate at Warwick University.
There are many good applications for AI and certainly some activities would be impossible without it. There are of course a lot of costs.
When I taught programming I would routinely receive multiple clearly AI generated assignments (I once got 15 identical submissions for a major exercise, and I mean identical) .
AI is not neutral and is easy to bias and it can be used to elicit self harm in the vulnerable, but that debate is for elsewhere.
My concern is for the sheer energy costs to achieve this. As of now we are already rushing headlong into catastrophic and likely irreversible climate change.
It is estimated (The math) that by 2028
more than half of the electricity going to data centers will be used for AI. At that point, AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households.
Worse, there is little evidence that much of those increased energy needs will be met by cleaner or renewable sources. Datacenters are required to operate 24/7 with >= 99.5% uptime and renewables (as we use them now) even backed by gigantic and equally environmentally damaging batteries will be insufficient.
In a “you must be kidding” moment I was listening to a PBS discussion of AI datacenters that was proposing making them Solar powered , “great” I thought, that will help. However, they would be in satellites in orbit around the earth. But because of where they would orbit (Sun-synchronous orbit) they would “probably” not be visible from the Earth. Many companies including Google are seriously researching this approach. It may even turn out to be economically and technically feasible. This seems a lot like throwing your rubbish into your neighbor’s yard.