One issue related to generative AI that I think does not get enough attention is its impact on the environment. A lot of people use AI tools every day without realizing how much energy and water are needed to keep them running. Even though it feels like you are just typing into a simple chat box, there are large data centers behind it that require constant electricity and cooling to operate.

A good example of this is how large AI models are trained. They process huge amounts of data using powerful computers that can run for weeks at a time. These data centers use a lot of electricity and also need water for cooling so the systems do not overheat. In some areas, this can put pressure on local resources, especially during times when energy or water demand is already high.

This matters because AI is becoming more common in everyday life, whether it is for school, work, or basic online searches. If we do not pay attention to the environmental cost, the convenience of AI could come with a serious downside. One solution is to improve how efficient AI systems are and to use cleaner energy sources for data centers. People can also be more mindful about when and how often they use AI tools so that they are not relying on them unnecessarily.

Going forward, I plan to use AI as a tool that can help improve my effort instead of replacing it. The main problem is that AI makes everything easier but if you rely on it too much, you can lose your ability to think and actually learn. For example, if I use AI to write my entire paper, I might get it done faster, but I won’t really understand the topic or be able to explain it fully. A better way to use it is by doing my own work first, then using it to fix certain things or give a better idea based on my work, that way I’m still doing the thinking and learning, and Ai is just helping me. I think it’s important because AI is becoming part of school, jobs, and something people use every day, so deciding not to use it isn’t a realistic option anymore and the real focus should be on how we are using it. My solution would be to always do it yourself first and use AI as a tool for feedback.

Going to this class all of us shared what we want to learn about LLMs and one of the most common ones was to use it in our academics correctly and ethically, which I can surely said got covered in this class.

I personally use AI mainly for understanding readings better, it helps me with language barrier and translates for me more accurately and understandable than google translate. However when I started my first year at college I was very skeptical, I refused to use it and I did not have any trust in it, but I still gave it a shot after hearing that people can use it without becoming lazy unethical, cheating etc. and this class helped me learn about how to do that. Even though I would prefer not to use it on daily basis just because of global issues coming with AI, it is a useful tool to manage your schedules, workouts and plans, and since it is still improving it should become even better in the future. It is everyones personal choice what they want to choose, whether to use it or not, but going off from what we learned, I would predict that AI will get better and will be used more in upcoming future when people actually try and it gets more talked about.

Considering all of the ethics issues that we’ve already touched basis on I would hope those get fixed as an example discrimination as the Kevin situation, I can’t imagine AI being capable of choosing a candidates for a job properly and fairly, but everything improves slowly so I think the most important thing is to be open-minded. However as we’ve learned there are some things that LLMs cannot compare to a human as creativity, so for the future life I would’t be too scared about LLMs taking over those type of jobs. For me my prediction would be that I would be using AI more personally than professionally, as someone who is trying to get into psychology field I can’t imagine AI being used based on the lack of empathy and human understanding.

I can say that this class made me more open minded and educated on the use of LLMs.

https://www.freethink.com/opinion/studio-ghibli-chatgpt-creativity?utm_source=tldrai

How do you plan to integrate AI in your life going forward – whether personally or professionally? Do you feel you have a choice here, for example is deciding not to use AI an option?

Whether it’s academic, work, or personal use AI can be very dangerous. I know some people who do not like AI in any way; They don’t like AI because they are worried people aren’t fully learning when they use it. People also don’t like it because it is creating a very unsafe environment with the pollution it creates.

For me, I will try to use it as little as possible. I think that getting rid of AI from my life would just be a silly concept considering it will be there for the rest of my life. Instead of not using at all, I can retain myself from using it in every situation or every school assignment.

When I am reading something I will try to understand it and apply it to the situation just like Dinsmore and Fryer said. It is important to know that AI isn’t an “easy way out” of work or assignments. It is there so it can help you understand something more than you can already comprehend. I hope more people will start to use AI as an idea and concept builder instead of an assignment accomplisher.

Learning and Individual Differences | ScienceDirect.com. (2019). Sciencedirect.com. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/learning-and-individual-differences

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C) I’m a Data Science major who’s gonna be looking for full-time work in the tech sector starting next semester. Given that the work I’m aiming to gt into will use a lot of machine learning and repeated tests, using AI like LLMs is going to be very useful (and likely essential) for handling the bottleneck of taking up a lot of time to draft boilerplate code and setting up tests for models. Also, a lot of companies are pushing their engineers to use AI for their work, likely to keep up an output rate that the bosses would want you to have. Their philosophy being it’s better to prototype multiple times and amend it rather than writing the code from scratch and then looking up documentation for syntax things. I think if you want to work in the tech sector in a decently sized company you wouldn’t really have a choice to not use AI. At some point, your managers would get on your case for not having an output as fast as your coworkers (the quality of their code would be irrelevant). For myself personally, I’ve found LLMs very useful in my coding (for personal projects and for a research project I’m currently working on) for the boilerplate code, but knowing the logic for what functions and such to use is still very important for human engineers. An example of this already impacting people is for ex. Meta, who is starting to have AI-Assisted coding interviews. companies are definitely pushing people, and other companies, to use AI in their work. The main issue is definitely environmental on a corporate scale. Companies should not be allowed to cheap out on their payment for evnironmental resource use that Data Centers takes advantage of, especially in small towns.

How do you plan to integrate AI in your life going forward – whether personally or professionally? Do you feel you have a choice here, for example is deciding not to use AI an option?

Honestly, I see AI becoming something I use the same way I use Google or a calculator it’s just part of how I get things done. For school and anything related to computer science, I’d use it to help me understand concepts faster, debug code, and get unstuck when I hit a wall. It saves time, but I’d still make sure I actually get the material, because if you just copy what AI gives you, you’re not really learning anything.

In my personal life, I’d probably use it to stay organized, plan things, or learn new stuff more efficiently. But I wouldn’t want it to take over everything. There’s still something important about figuring things out on your own and thinking through problems without shortcuts every single time.

As for not using AI at all, I don’t think that’s very realistic anymore. It’s already built into so many things we use every day, so completely avoiding it would honestly just make life harder. But I do think there’s a difference between using it as a tool and depending on it too much. I’d want to stay in that middle ground where it helps me, but I’m still the one actually thinking.