Can We Go Back to Using Our Own Brains?

I’m tired of AI.

No, I don’t want you to write my email. No, I don’t want you to finish my sentence for me. No, I don’t want my own website’s content management system generating its own content. What the heck?

And I would also prefer that my local café use Microsoft Paint to share their daily specials, rather than generate one of those oh-so-delightful AI posters.

Actually, forget Microsoft Paint. Tell me all about your muffin and coffee special with a piece of paper and a crayon in your non-dominant hand. Put some real thought into it yourself.

Look, I get it. It’s helpful when you’re busy. Why write your own meal plan when some sketchy robot can do it for you in a fraction of the time? And why pay a graphic designer to create a poster for your business when ChatGPT can whip something up faster than they can even answer their phone?

But- and I can’t stress this enough- while you’re having fun creating a caricature of yourself or making ChatGPT edit damage onto a picture of your car to scare your spouse, you’re taking away precious resources from vulnerable communities. You’re also making me redundant. But that’s an entirely different thing.

AI is Hurting the Environment

Asking ChatGPT to draw you a picture or write you a poem seems harmless. But you need to know that AI is an enormous energy consumer, and it’s hungry for water and raw materials. Did you know that a single generative AI query uses up to 10 times more electricity than a standard web search?

Then there’s the reliance on fossil fuels. Data centres use electricity from regional power grids, many of which still rely on natural gas and coal, which then emit greenhouse gases. Big yikes.

And what about the fresh water? Fresh water that vulnerable communities need. Rather than being used to support people’s livelihoods and well-being, millions of litres of it are being used to cool servers in enormous AI warehouses.

Worst of all, data centres are being built in areas where water is already scarce. With some of these data centres the size of small towns and consuming as much as 13 million liters per day, the equivalent water usage of up to 50,000 people, local communities and ecosystems are now suffering worse than ever before.

Mining and E-Waste

Building data centres and AI processors doesn’t just require a few everyday building materials. They actually need quite a lot of minerals and metals, such as boron, silicon, lithium, gallium, and graphite. Many of these are essential for semiconductors and microelectronics.

And where do you get them? The earth, of course. The mining and processing of these minerals have a significant environmental impact, including the loss of groundwater and forests, water and soil contamination, and soil erosion. And these issues don’t just exist in a vacuum. They result in land degradation, biodiversity loss, and harm to human health.

What About the Dolphins

We drink out of soggy straws to save the dolphins, and AI is over here threatening to kill them. And I’m only kind of half-exaggerating. Kind of. According to the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, the idea of underwater data centres is being thrown around because they might be more sustainable than land-based ones with reduced cooling costs and associated energy use.

That's cool and all, but the heat generated by data centres has the potential to raise local water temperatures. Waters that are already warming due to climate change could become even warmer. The healthy functioning of marine life could be at risk. I’m not going to pretend to know what goes on in the ocean (it’s none of my business what’s down there), but I know that warmer waters have a flow-on effect. Nutrient cycles can be disrupted, along with food webs. All of a sudden, we’ve killed everything. It sounds dramatic, but honestly, we humans have a reputation for that kind of thing.

Can We Go Back to Using Our Own Brains?

Remember when we used to problem-solve, think for ourselves, and talk to experts to learn new things? Yeah, can we go back to that? It might actually benefit you to cut down on ChatGPT a little.

Current research suggests that it may negatively affect your critical thinking skills. According to a 2025 study on AI use and critical thinking skills, those who regularly use AI may experience reduced critical thinking abilities, a phenomenon known as cognitive offloading. This means they have a reduced need for independent thinking because they rely on automated analytical tasks.

Another research review determined that increased dependency on AI tools to perform tasks that would otherwise require deep thinking may affect:

• Mental engagement

• Cognitive skills such as information retrieval and calculations

• Memory capacity

• Attention span

• Focus

• Mental health challenges

• And more…

It’s Probably Not All Bad

So, I’ve been a little doom and gloom on the AI front. Before Gemini lovers come at me with digital pitchforks, I suppose I should mention a few good things it has done. But I’m just going to bullet point them, because I don’t want to give this topic even more of my time.

• Takes care of boring, time-consuming tasks to free up your time for more creative ones

• Processes information far faster than humans

• Makes fewer mistakes than humans

• Better patient care and diagnostics in healthcare

The Moral of the Story is That We Should Use AI Sparingly

Every story should have a clear moral lesson. Not to be all Aesop’s Fables here, but I think we need to take a good, long, hard look at ourselves. If you’re using AI to decide where to eat for dinner or to make funny pictures, it’s worth looking at the effects those decisions are having. What’s a fun picture to you is a drought and no drinking water to someone else.