Flagstaff High School

The Great Impact of Artificial Intelligence

Lillee Martin

Artificial Intelligence is on the rise across the globe, and hidden around every corner: infiltrating the very structure of businesses, educational institutions, corporations, etc. The prospect of AI has been widely debated for decades, with fears revolving around societally destructive robots and corrupt technology manifesting across the media being compared to the nearly secretive—but ridiculously prominent—presence of its product everywhere you look. 

            Many people in schools and workplaces, both students and professionals, utilize resources like ChatGPT to optimize efficiency and thoroughness within their work—benefitting from many of its features. ChatGPT as a website provides tools like image-generation, accurate presentation of tangible concepts, realistic conversational interactions, and standard quality written material. These are a handful of example tasks that are further developing and evolving alongside other AI applications with the significant increase in AI studies and utilization. 

            While these resources present as incredibly useful in sophisticated business and educational environments, it has its downsides—and, spoiler alert, they outweigh the positives more than you could possibly begin to imagine. According to Earth.org and studies done by the University of California, Riverside, generative AI practices like ChatGPT utilize a ridiculous amount of freshwater in order to simply function, stating: “for a simple conversation of 20-50 questions, the water consumed is equivalent to a 500ml bottle, making the total water footprint for inference substantial considering its billions of users.” Earth.org also claims that this software expels more than double the amount of carbon dioxide than a single person’s entire annual carbon dioxide emissions (including that of both automobiles and living facilities), amounting to greater than 8.4 tons each year. 

            Beyond the detrimental environmental impact of AI resources, as well as the lack of thought it provokes among those resorting to it for simple mental tasks, its increasing mainstream impact has grown to overshadow artistry and artistic outlets. Art is society’s greatest connecting factor and creates community like none other—and it is growing corroded by AI and its determination to lace itself into the foundation of all that has existed on its own. This may be an attempt to further strengthen potentially weakened or improbable societal structures; however, it isn’t working, and it is resulting in an uproar against AI. Samantha Kelly, a Flagstaff High School senior, is a brilliant visual artist beyond her academic excellence. When approached about the topic and asked her thoughts about the impact of AI on art fields and careers, she said, “I think pursuing any of the arts as a career has always been super risky and fueled by the fears of people just not getting recognition or fame. What is so scary about AI is that it can mass produce things at a rapid rate. What scared me away from pursuing going into a more creative field was AI and how it is being used in every corner you find art. My parents own a small business and my dad, against my will, has used AI for things such as logos or writing reports. My mom has used AI in things as simple as writing emails. It’s fast, it’s cheap, it’s concise, it sometimes is what people think is the best answer. Unfortunately, I think this outlook is what I think will either make or break specific creative industries. I fear creative careers such as digital design or things like that could be severely impacted and I think several other creative industries are well on their way if things continue as they are.”

            So, before opening Snapchat AI to ask for personal advice or an OpenAI application because you don’t understand your math homework, I ask that you consider: do you want a fabricated world? 

Link back to The Talon 2nd Edition