AI consumes what humans need for survival and it’s one of the reasons your living costs are so high.

The frenzy of AI, the absolute obsession with “AI,” is a bit much. I’m not an “AI” engineer or technical expert but a consequentialist, and this obsession isn’t going to end well with us, in my blunt, consequentialist, big-picture opinion.

We are facing several forms of “crisis,” but for now, let’s focus on the big three: EEM—environmental, economic, and mental—amidst the AI frenzy.

Environmental

Whether you refer to it as an environmental crisis or climate change. It’s real. But let’s talk about what exactly “climate change” is because it might seem a bit overwhelming, and I feel that many people do not really understand what climate change is and why it’s an environmental crisis that affects you for real.

At the local level, climate change happens when we remove trees, bushes, or natural spots from a street (for example).

These are the consequences when you remove a tree:

• You increased ‘hot spots’ during the summer, because now you’ve reduced shade.
• You removed places where birds and other creatures can take refuge during storms, heatwaves, or throughout the winter.
• You removed food sources for local animals.
• You reduced air quality because now there are fewer trees helping clean up the environment.
• You increased noise because trees act as noise dampeners.

This impact is just at the local level; the removal of a tree has consequences on a street’s “heat,” noise, and air quality. Imagine what happens at the provincial, national, and international levels.

AI data centers take up too many resources—water, electricity, and land. Things we, as humans, need.

We also know that AI data centers are bad news for water; it’s not a secret. For instance, the environmental and energy study institute estimates that large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day (Yañez-Barnuevo 2025). The water doesn’t go back to the base flow, and much of it evaporates in the process (Goery 2025). Moreover, what happens when 5 million gallons of water per day evaporates? It leaves concentrations of salts and other contaminants (Goery 2025).

They also use up a lot more energy than our conventional data centers (e.g., cloud storage). The difference goes from 25,000 households (conventional data centers) to as many as 100,000 homes or more for AI-focused data centers (Goery 2025).

To sum it up: AI consumes a significant number of resources.

So, while we all complain that things are increasing in cost and that affordability is an issue, the more you use AI, the more things will cost because it uses up resources. You’re competing with it, and it’s getting preferential treatment.  

Economical

Beyond the obvious number of resources that these data centers for AI consume, it also consumes jobs. For example, large companies using a lot of artificial intelligence, such as Amazon, Meta, and IBM, “have announced tens of thousands of job cuts.” (Galloway 2025). Large supermarkets and fast-food restaurants have added kiosks to ‘eliminate’ the middle person in customer service, becoming commonplace (Al-Arami 2024). AI continues to grow, and its assimilation into the workforce has pushed the development of new skills to help sustain increasing “reliance” on machines (Al-Arami 2024). We are effectively replacing our skills to accommodate AI in our workforce.

As a consequentialist, I see the integration of AI into the workforce and our economy with pessimism, because it’s done in a way that is often unnecessary. We need some AI, but we do not need all AI. Things that we do need—because we do not have the current capacity (anywhere) to speed up: AI-powered booths in hospitals to help with triage. How many times have we gone into the emergency room facing what we feel is an existential crisis and had to wait 5, 6, or sometimes 7 hours for us to get into another triage line and then for us to see a specialist—only to be told that this was not a real emergency and they’ll book something for 2-3 months down the line? Ok, we could have avoided this issue if we had an AI-powered booth. Again, this technology is not intended to displace nurses or doctors; rather, it aims to streamline the process and ensure that medical professionals can provide immediate assistance where it is truly needed rather than for issues that may resolve on their own. I think having this would help, perhaps with some assistance from residents—if an issue is flagged, for example, then reviewed by the resident on the floor.

The issue I see is that organizations are indiscriminately integrating AI into everything—creating these ‘credits’ that encourage us to use features and upgrade (making systems dependent) even when there is no actual need for AI in the first place. For myself, one of the most annoying new ‘features’ is the obsession with having an AI bot on the side while designing a website. I don’t need that. We didn’t ask for that and are making the user experience more dependent on AI ‘assistance.’

Let’s put AI assistance into where it is needed—reducing triage time at hospitals, not helping web designers code a simple HEX colour into the background of a page. If you don’t know what a hex # is and are designing a website, I shake my head. Leave that for a web designer. If you need simple graphic designs, hire a graphic designer to create them for you. I am starting to see all of these generative AI-produced graphics, and for larger brands that use this, it really hurts your image—there’s a whole ecosystem that you’re trying to bypass, and removing ‘jobs or opportunities from that ecosystem reduces the number of available consumers that can purchase your product in the first place.

Climate change is costing Canadian cities billions of dollars, and Canadian municipalities are struggling to maintain the infrastructure, which raises concerns about both the environmental and economic consequences of AI data centers (Karamali, 2026). If you’re wondering why your property taxes keep going up and aren’t ‘keeping’ up with the rate of inflation, consider the additional costs that a city will incur to accommodate the use of resources by AI data centers. Life will become unbearably more expensive.

Mental

This is probably the most concerning, because we are increasing reliance and dependency on a system for things that we’re meant to be figuring out ourselves. This isn’t the same as a piece of equipment—a phone, a camera, a computer. I would make the argument that this is somewhat like the introduction and reliance on calculators in schools that reduced arithmetic skills because it made students more dependent on it for calculations. For instance, in Canada, math scores have declined for over a decade, according to an article released by the C.D. Howe Institute in early 2026 (C.D. Howe Instittue, 2026). Why? Well, because we’ve increased the use of calculators for absolutely everything, even simple calculations that should (and could) be done without their use.  

As far as reading skills. Yes, those skills are also suffering, and as an instructor, I have observed a sharp decline in reading and comprehension abilities at the university level. Students are relying more on generative AI to provide summaries of large books and articles without going through and verifying that what the AI is saying is factual. Students are losing their reading skimming skills and critical thinking skills because the brain needs to be actively used to learn (Mineo, 2025).

Beyond the foreseeable decline of cognitive skills from overreliance on generative material, the excessive ‘information’ that is bombarding us isn’t good for our brains and cognitive development. For instance, cognitive development during teenage years requires advanced stages of abstract reasoning and problem-solving  (Naik, Mathias, & Krishnan, 2026). However, increases in the use of social media, as an example, have brought forth studies that explore its effects on attention, memory, and academic performance. In this case, excessive use of screentime and multitasking harms cognitive development. In this case, the ‘doom scroll’ and the algorithms in social media that deliver bad news have negative health effects because they bombard us with stress, which prompts us to scroll even more (Salamon, 2024). In the context of generative AI, its widespread use carries the risk of cognitive atrophy and loss of brain plasticity as use of ChatGPT reduces cognitive engagement and cognitive load because we’re reducing our efforts to transform information into knowledge and leaving this to the AI (Roxin, 2026). Although we might write faster and produce faster outputs, EEGs used to measure electrical activity of the brain showed that brain connectivity halves and 83% of people who used AI were unable to remember a passage that had just been written (in a study) (Roxin, 2026).

The point I’m trying to make here is that AI isn’t good for our mental health—studies have shown that people who use heavy LLMs carry a significant risk of cognitive decline because we delegate mental efforts to AI and thus use less of our brain.

Works Cited

C.D. Howe Institue. (2026, January 16). Behind Canada’s Declining Math Performance and the Evidence-Based Fix – C.D. Howe Institute. Retrieved from C.D. Howe Institute: https://cdhowe.org/publication/behind-canadas-declining-math-performance-and-the-evidence-based-fix/

Karamali, K. (2026, July 11). Climate change is costing Canadian cities billions. Experts say there’s a better solution. . Retrieved from CTV News: https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/article/climate-change-is-costing-canadian-cities-billions-experts-say-theres-a-better-solution/

Mineo, L. (2025, November 13). Is AI dulling our minds? . Retrieved from The Harvard Gazette: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/11/is-ai-dulling-our-minds/

Naik, V. S., Mathias, E. G., & Krishnan, P. J. (2026). Impact of social media on cognitive development of children and young adults: a systematic review. BMC pediatrics, 25(1), 826.

Roxin, I. (2026, July 3). Generative AI: the risk of cognitive atrophy. Retrieved from Polytechnique insights: https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/neuroscience/generative-ai-the-risk-of-cognitive-atrophy/

Salamon, M. (2024, September 1). Doomscrolling dangers. Retrieved from Harvard Health Publishing: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/doomscrolling-dangers