So, it’s far from clear that they can improve customer service, profitability, employee morale, productivity, and so on, even if using AI is cheaper than employing humans in the short term. For instance, this 2025 report found that AI users were prone to overestimating the benefits—believing that AI tools would speed up work by 20%, when in reality they slowed down their work by about 20% for a range of reasons, including having to fix AI errors. That research is still ongoing, and it’s too early to tell given that LLMs came onto the scene only a couple years ago or so. But the gaffes that companies have made, even Google as a leader in AI, have been embarrassing or, worse, a source of legal liability.

The impact on local communities is real. In Santa Clara county, the heart of Silicon Valley, AI data centers are estimated to gobble up 60% of the area’s available energy. At the same time, Silicon Valley and other parts of the state, as well as the country, continue to experience blackouts during times of peak demand for energy, such as on hot days, and our days are getting hotter and hotter. Energy companies are already under intense pressure to fix their infrastructure which has been blamed for devastating wildfires. Early estimates of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, possibly caused by sparking power lines, put the damages at over $250 billion. All this points to a looming energy disaster, which feeds the worsening climate disaster.

Hopefully, you’re still in school because you understand that it’s still important to learn something in this education you are paying for, even if your endgame is to just receive a degree you can flash to employers and get on with your life. Imagine that it’s required to join a gym and complete a bunch of fitness courses in order to land a certain job, such as being a firefighter or some other physically demanding work. Would it be ok to just send in a robot in your place to do all that heavy lifting and other workouts? Even if you could get away with it, why would you want to, especially if you expect to do well in that job?

but to give up on reason and whatever other intellectual powers we possess is to give up on being human.

but there are many important but invisible tradeoffs in using it, especially in the classroom.

On the other hand, universities aren’t vocational schools, merely training students for future jobs.