Artificial intelligence is a part of our working lives as students now. There will always be concerns and drawbacks, but it is quickly becoming imperative that college students develop skills with AI and ethical practices for the sake of becoming valuable and modernized workers.
The rapid progression of artificial intelligence (AI) is undeniable. It will inarguably become a part of many of our lives, particularly in a work setting to some extent in the near future whether we individually use it or not. NVIDIA, a company at the forefront of AI development due to its production of computer chips necessary to building artificial intelligence, has experienced nothing short of a financial explosion. The company recently became the first publicly traded company to be worth $5 trillion amidst its massive monetary gains.
Essentially, there is money to be made and potential to increase business productivity. Regardless of personal opinions, those two reasons alone will continue to propel artificial intelligence into the spotlight and the sights of large companies looking to get a step ahead of competitors. AI is here to stay, barring a colossal industry crash or significant policy change regarding copyright or licensing rights. And even then, this type of advancement in technology is likely to find some way to slip through the legal cracks eventually.
The ethical uses of AI, however, present a much more blurry debate. There are vastly differing opinions on appropriate use cases within education and the workplace, with some believing it belongs at the forefront due to its potential to catalyze advantages over other businesses, while others would rather refrain from use entirely.
Two productive uses of AI already being seen benefit business communications and editing. Chatbots and programs already have the capacity to greatly benefit workflow in multiple ways. In a specific example, users can instruct AI to act as a client, giving it necessary information. The AI can then produce client expectations and ideas that may have not otherwise been expressed. Another example is the case of artificial intelligence being used to skim large documents, videos or podcasts for light editing. Though final editing should still be done by a human in most—if not all—cases, AI can find which parts of the document, video or podcast are most likely to catch a social media algorithm and go viral. These, and other cases, pose AI as a tool that could be massively helpful especially to small businesses that may not be able to afford to pay employees to do these tasks or otherwise would not have the time. Supporting small businesses is a good thing, and AI could be used in a way, if developed correctly, to give these small businesses a much more equal shot at success as larger businesses.
In this case, work is streamlined, time is saved and nothing is being plagiarized. While the ethical concerns of taking jobs away and environmental concerns still apply, these are use cases with clear benefits that are going to continue to happen as artificial intelligence becomes stronger.
It is worth noting, though, that many of these small businesses will not have the access to funding and technology necessary to develop these types of programs and large companies like NVIDIA and Alphabet at the forefront of AI development do not have much motivation to plunge resources into helping their competition grow stronger.
One worrying issue that will likely continue for the foreseeable future is the negative impact of AI on the environment. This brings up two points: for one, it is incredibly important to delineate between productive and wasteful uses of AI. For two, while some curbed usage of artificial intelligence could absolutely benefit the environment, technological advances like AI are the exact sort of human technological advances that could help us solve environmental crises in the future.
Studies from the Michigan Institute of Technology acknowledge a 20 watt jump, from 194 terawatt hour (TWh) in 2010 to 204 TWh in 2018 rise in datacenter power usage. (datacenter being a large scale building or group of buildings holding computer systems and servers) While the jump between 2010 and 2018 is insignificant, the global datacenter power usage jumped to 460 in 2025. MIT estimates with the current rate of efficiency improvements, cryptocurrency trends and artificial intelligence demand, the global electricity consumption of datacenters is expected to range between 620 to 1,050 TWh in 2026. Additionally, the United Nations Environment Program addresses concerns over destructive rare earth element mining used in AI microchips.
Because of the massive business and financial implications, artificial intelligence should be discussed in most, if not all, affected courses of study until there is a significant economic or cultural shift regarding public perception. Part of this education should absolutely be about detrimental uses, such as using AI to write significant portions of assignments or documents for publication. This kind of use needs to be condemned both to refrain from energy waste and for the sake of individual education. At a certain point, if students are paying money for a degree but using AI to do all of their assignments, there is a good argument to be made that they are not learning much and are wasting their own money unless they are gaining their education elsewhere. Conversely, artificial intelligence can absolutely be effectively useful for ideation and planning. To that point, though, overuse will cause educational stagnation for students and schools not properly prepared.
Perhaps the most concerning issue when it comes to social development is the Dead-internet theory-esque flooding of AI imitation and deepfake content to social media and websites. Not only is a large portion of this content wasteful from a time and energy standpoint, it can also become incredibly dangerous. With how accurate artificial intelligence has already gotten at replicating faces and voices, fake content may quickly become indistinguishable from real videos, pictures and audio recordings. This is made worse by the concerns about whether AI-detecting technology will be able to keep up with the strength of AI and whether image, video or recording meta-data would be necessary to determine legitimacy. While some of this fake content is certainly not meant to be harmful, the drawbacks are too severe and the production of this type of content should be condemned.
Additionally, issues with plagiarism will continue to rise. Some artificial intelligence skims internet sources to generate its content for users. In many cases, this content is ripped from places, such as online newspapers, that need advertising revenue to maintain full production. These issues have already spurred lawsuits and conversations about licensing agreements between online productions and AI companies. These issues expand to AI art, where art generated by image-generating AI can produce content that is eerily similar to art produced directly by humans who need commission money as part of their income.
All of this is to say, AI is likely to become important as a skill and a tool in many places where it is not already relevant, but young people must understand how situational the use is. With little to no history to work off of, it may be difficult for college curriculums to catch up, but the proper education on appropriate use of artificial intelligence is likely to turn into more of an expectation than a secondary benefit in the near future on college campuses.
