Allan Hu ’28 types away on his keyboard. Click-Click-Click. He clicks submit and waits for feedback on his biology free response questions (FRQ) from an AI chatbot the morning of his Advanced Placement (AP) biology test. He stares at the screen nervously while his feedback loads. Ten seconds later, the screen outputs “three out of four responses correct. EBR: Meeting Expectations.
This AI bot is Hu’s feedback for the upcoming summative, which would normally be given by a teacher. Hu shares his opinion on this new method of learning by describing his constructive experience with AI.
“I think that AI is a positive for the most part,” Hu said, “It’s a tool to make hard work more tolerable.”
Hu has seen an increased implementation of AI in his classroom. Hu noticed the increase in the variety of programs used by schools.
“We’re using AI like Magic School and Snorkl to help all students improve their overall comprehension of Spanish,” Hu said.
Hu’s experience is becoming an everyday reality for many students in modern classrooms. According to a 2025 Education Week poll of teachers regarding AI usage, 60% of teachers integrated AI into lessons, an increase from the 18% shown in the same poll from 2024.
As AI usage increases, teachers likeMelissa Mack, are raising questions regarding the ethics of its use and widespread implementation. Mack feels that AI restricts cognitive development within her students during school.
“I just think that you are supplanting your own ability to think over and over and over,” Mack said. “Whether it’s a math set of problems or an essay or physics you’re robbing your brain of an ability to grow.”
Mack believes critical thinking is crucial, and its use must take into account the ethics of its use. However its appeal of making one’s life easier, through uses such as brainstorming and summarizing, continues to overpower the downsides and environmental impacts AI usage has.
“You need to have critical thinking skills and creativity in knowing how to apply AI and use it effectively and critically, considering the ethical implications of AI,” Mack said. “But it’s an easy out. It’s seductive.”
Mack describes the undeniable appeal that AI has as an addiction that is causing teachers and students to become increasingly reliant on AI. According to the American Psychological Association, among adolescents, 7 out of 10 have disclosed using at least one AI tool in 2024. In the Common Sense Media survey, 1,045 teenagers reported using AI for homework assistance.
As a result some people, such as Jill Lisius, AP Environmental Science teacher, have noticed a trend of using AI for assignments among her students.
“A quote I heard said you ‘don’t grow your muscles by lifting weights with a forklift’,” Lisius said. “You grow muscles by doing the work and using your muscles. AI can be [viewed] in the same way, when it doesn’t exercise our minds and expand our thinking.”
Lisius echoes Mack’s concern about students using AI to do more than just brainstorm. They both believe that students might begin with using AI programs for help but could end up completing the entire project or task in the process.
As people start to implement AI into their everyday lives, AI continues to grow more data centers. ABIResearch states that as of March 2025, 6,111 publicly operated data centers have been reported worldwide. These data centers run AI programs consuming lots of energy in order to run their systems.
This requirement leads to large amounts of energy consumed to cool their systems and prevent overheating. More specifically, the U.S. The Department of Energy stated that data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and are expected to consume approximately 6.7% to 12 % of the total U.S. electricity by 2028.
Hu is a member of Green Team, a school club prioritizing a sustainable future through planning events such as Earth Week in April. Hu raises concerns regarding people not showing responsibility towards minimizing the overuse of water.
“If people took three seconds short of their usual shower, then we would be able to cover these water [shortages],” Hu said. “But people don’t care enough to change their AI usage, so nothing is changing.”
Lisuis continues to elaborate about the importance of responsibility towards using AI as a tool. She feels that issues occur when individuals use it for questions that students could have answered on their own. Lisuis adds that although it may be common to use AI as a tool, the issue occurs when individuals use it for questions that they could have easily answered on their own.
“I think we’re talking about responsible use of it and having these discussions about
when is the right time to use it when it is not necessary, ” Lisius said. “I’m not gonna say it was a waste but just not needed when the method that we used before was fine for that specific task.”
As Lisius notes, in the world today, irresponsible use of AI could worsen the major water issue that the world is facing (i.e. water shortages), but as AI continues to grow, questions are raised about the future. Putarut Sunny Suntharanund, sponsor of Green Team, says she is concerned about the excess water usage due to AI’s global expansion.
“These cooling towers require so much water that in some communities, the taps can dry or the quality of the water changes– some residents even have to start rationing the water,” Suntharanund said.
Amidst this increase in water usage, many wonder how water needs will be met with the limited global water supply. Since water is an essential resource that should be safeguarded, Mack echoes such concerns regarding water scarcity and feels a sense of urgency.
“Potable water, which means you can drink it, and the scarcity of it is going to be a very real problem that the world is going to be facing very, very soon,” Mack said. “ [In] many countries it already is.”
According to usbr.gov, the Bureau of Reclamation California-Great Basin, 3% of Earth’s water is fresh, and of that tiny amount, 2.5% is the fresh water that is unavailable as it is confined in glaciers and polar ice caps. This leaves 0.5% of fresh water to maintain and meet the needs of Earth’s growing population.
With the development of datacenters globally, it is anticipated that Earth’s water will be an exclusive resource in the future. According to dl.acm.org, more than 23 billion liters of fresh water used for onsite cooling in 2023 was consumed to maintain Google’s self-owned datacenters. As a result, locations already lacking water will face further shortages in the future.
With this usage of fresh water, it continues to raise the concern on how AI is impacting Earth, including suburbs using a plethora of water like Lincolnshire. In addition to water waste, increase in electricity usage is another important resource being used as a constant feeder due to the result of AI’s growth and usage.
According to the International Energy Agency (LEA), AI is expected to make up 6% of the United States’s total electricity usage by 2026. With these projections, students like Hu are beginning to worry about the environmental effects of the AI chat bots they use for school.
In a research paper from 2021, scientists from Google and the University of Berkeley approximated that the training process of OpenAI’s GPT-3 consumed the same amount of energy to power as about 120 average U.S. homes for a year. As AI is projected to grow, the environmental impacts will as well. The use of AI needs to grow slow enough for environmental efforts to offset the additional data center emissions.
In response to the environmental aspects of AI, Senator Edward J. Markey and others have introduced the Artificial Intelligence Environmental Impacts Acts of 2024 in Massachusetts. This legislation requires the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to carry out a study on the environmental impacts of AI.
Every year, AI usage continues to rapidly grow by nearly 17%, as depicted by DemandSage. Its effects on the environment continues to increase as the number of data centers surges from 500,000 in 2012 to 8 million in 2024 (United Nations Environmental Programme).
Hu feels that the control of AI energy usage is in consumers’ hands and they need to change their habits to see a true improvement in the environment. In the end, if our usage increases sustainably enough to allow for us to offset the addition of data centers, Hu may have a point. Although one person changing their daily habits might not seem like it will make a big difference, it is the duty of the world to start fighting against their bot.
“AI will continue to consume if we let it consume,” Hu said.