By: Yostina Youssef

Is Artificial Intelligence harmful? It’s not a secret that AI uses up and contaminates
tons of water (depriving the people living by data centers of clean water) and electricity
(running up innocent people’s electric bills). Generative AI specifically is largely trained off of stolen and pirated work.
Why do so many students, including aspiring academics, writers, and artists, choose to
use ChatGPT on their homework? Because, in the words of recent alum Sam Silver, “this school is an academic pressure cooker”. Grades are prioritized more than education is; by our parents, by our teachers, even (from the sound of it) by college admissions officers. Students don’t set out to “game the system”, but when both your self-worth and your entire future hinges on a percentage (and there’s a tool that can quickly take one more thing off your rapidly overflowing plate), many students consider it a necessity, or else a smart way to maximize their productivity. And why shouldn’t they, when everyone around them is treating GenAI as just a new, commonplace facet of life? Your mom is using it to come up with questionably- timed vacation schedules, your older brother is using it to get through his college classes, your classmate is selling T-shirts of an AI generated graphic on Etsy.
This is not to say that these students have no choice, nor to absolve them of any
responsibility. It’s simply to say that this development of GenAI use was inevitable, with the
way the system is currently set. With tech companies like Apple and Google shoving AI tools
down our throats, mindless AI-generated content popping up on our screens every day, easy access to generative programs on every device we use and the fear of not being able to “handle it all” looming over high school students, it’s no wonder so many families in Georgia, Baltimore, and Virginia can no longer afford to pay their electric bills.