As technology continues to advance, the use of artificial intelligence in day-to-day life has been growing exponentially, especially among students. A notorious resource, ChatGPT, is a generative-based chatbot designed to answer prompts in natural, human dialog with the most accurate answer. It can be used for something as simple as a Google search, all the way up to producing a complex essay. It has become frequently used for classwork and assignments, often a tool for fabrication. There have been debates over its ethicality and whether AI is replacing creativity and problem-solving skills. However, among these concerns lies an underlying problem: its harmful environmental effects.
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, was released to the public on Nov. 30, 2022. In 2015, OpenAI began as a non-profit organization founded by various entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Sam Altman. As stated by Tech Target, “ChatGPT works through its Generative Pre-trained Transformer, which uses specialized algorithms to find patterns within data sequences. ChatGPT originally used the GPT-3 large language model, a neural network machine learning model and the third generation of Generative Pre-trained Transformer. The transformer pulls from a significant amount of data to formulate a response.” The complexity of ChatGPT does not come at a small price despite being readily available at the click of a button. The AI is stored in large data centers, and with each prompt entered into the program, large amounts of energy are consumed by the thousands of calculations necessary to generate the best answer. As the data centers and servers perform these calculations, they produce substantial amounts of heat. Water is used to cool the machinery to keep it from overheating, and some establishments, depending on the location, use A.C. rather than water. According to Earth.org, researchers from the University of California, Riverside, conducted a study that reported Microsoft used approximately 700,000 liters of fresh water during GPT-3’s training in the data centers. Nonetheless, both methods require abundant power, largely at the expense of communities surrounding the data centers. Where the climate is hotter, more water is needed, taken from the resources of the residents surrounding the data centers. The higher the water and electricity consumption, the higher the bills for the citizens. These effects aren’t exclusive to the environment and our daily lives; AI is beginning to diminish the importance of human intelligence.
When a clear and concise answer is not given through various other problem-solving methods, AI, in moderation, is completely understandable. In certain cases, it can even improve your work and productivity. Asking AI to review your essay and offer suggestions or highlight grammatical errors is far different from instructing it to write the entire thing. Recently, many have completely surrendered their own thinking skills, resorting to ChatGPT for answers that are quite easily attainable with critical thinking. The whole concept of AI initially seems impressive and, in some cases, revolutionary. All of these factors seem to provoke its progression , yet, it’s beginning to replace the humanness of so many things; in fact, by its detrimental environmental effects, it’s a direct threat to us as well. AI stands for artificial intelligence, so we must ask, who has the real intelligence?
