There is a sword hanging over our heads: the expansion of generative artificial intelligence [AI]’s threat to humanity. The dangers of AI can not be ignored. As a junior in high school beginning to look at my future, I am horrified watching AI infiltrate every corner of our society. Teachers, peers, family, influencers and companies all around me are being consumed by AI.
Just this month, a researcher who quit Anthropic and OpenAI publicly expressed concerns for AI’s rapid, unprecedented expansion. Jacob Coxon, who quit AI firm Anthropic, told BBC that people working in technology fear the development of self-operating generative AI.
“I believe that if we don’t slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future,” Coxon said, stating further that staff at AI firms were “planning what to do with their lives and thinking about the impacts of their work.”
Coxon outlined that tech companies are recklessly racing to train and develop new technologies without any regard to maintaining control over it. Suggestions of an emergency “kill-switch” are futile; just as AI bots have self-sufficiently overridden safety features in the past, they would eventually learn to overturn it.
It is worth noting that Coxon’s “whistle blow” is possibly strategic fear-mongering, shifting focus away from the more tangible, current dangers of AI to an abstract existential scare.
Beyond such existentialism, AI is currently deteriorating our environment, as the data centers where they are trained consume unruly amounts of water. Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day, according to a study from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. In many cases, data centers are built in impoverished neighborhoods across the US, where resources are heavily polluted. Their water is undrinkable, their air is unbreathable and making day-to-day life unbearable. In fact, one of the few issues that unites the right and left political parties of America is that nobody wants a data center in their town.
Further, though research is ongoing, studies show that any reliance on AI technology dulls the mind, literally making people dumber. Microsoft’s study, “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking,” revealed that higher confidence in generative AI is statistically associated with less critical thinking.
AI has also infiltrated the military, changing the scope of modern warfare in unpredictable ways for the foreseeable future. Last Friday, CNN reported that the US’s AI-assisted intel report generated false information that “almost started a war” with China. The report claimed that a Chinese vessel in the Middle East carried components of nuclear weaponry and it wasn’t until after the US military planned to take action that it was uncovered that the AI misidentified the vessel.
I understand why my peers see AI as an appealing tool of the future , but the environmental, sociological and psychological impact can not be ignored for the sake of convenience. However, though boycotting may send a powerful message, such efforts are ultimately futile, as even if every high schooler in America quit using OpenAI, the tech billionaires running the operation will persist in their agenda.
AI companies need to be held accountable, and the discussion of AI must not be one of ignorance and blind compliance. The rhetoric that “AI is inevitable” and that one must work with the technology to keep up with society around them is a wildly false claim. AI is only inevitable if it is collectively agreed upon. We determine our own futures and we must opt for one in which we live, not generate.
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