Like the burrs of burdock sticking to everything on a walk in a meadow, artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, attaching to everything. Even the simplest search on Google or any other platform is not free of AI curated results. And I suspect you did not ask for AI to go work for you.

The recent rise in AI has been practically unimaginable. In just a few short years, each of the ten biggest companies in the world, except for the Saudi oil company Aramco, is engaged with AI, most of them very heavily, leading many to fear that this bubble will burst with grave consequences. However, like most of us, I suspect that you are not benefiting from this massive inflation in stock prices. But there is no free lunch. The escalation is costing each and everyone of us heavily. Just consider this:

• Electricity prices have risen significantly – by more than 10% — in the last year because of heavy demands by data centers that fuel AI. If the tech companies have their way, there will be 3 times as many data centers as today in the next five years; these will demand as much electricity as 30 million households!
• Data centers also need enormous amounts of water to cool their computers and other equipment. A tripling of data centers will require as much water as 18.5 million households. Imagine this in parts of the country already struggling with water shortage.
• Tech companies are often mistakenly thought to be environmentally benign. But more than half of the electricity used to power data centers is from fossil fuel sources. The tripling in their numbers will make their emissions far worse.

These environmental impacts are in addition to many other societal impacts of AI, including those on the job market, consequences of algorithmic biases, and AI’s ability to easily generate fake and degrading pictures, not to mention its other confabulations. Recently, more than 200 public interest organizations have urged the US Congress to put a moratorium on new data centers.

I don’t mean to be a Luddite! AI is an incredibly powerful technology, with its legitimate uses in research, medical sciences, weather prediction and for other complex tasks. But we hardly need it for even the simplest of internet searches, much less for outsourcing human creativity and imagination. Couldn’t this technology be made more humane, more respectful of the worth and dignity of all people and the Earth?!

Rashid Shaikh
UUMFE Board Member At-Large

Selected Sources:

Oliver Milma. More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US
datacenters. The Guardian. December 8, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2025/dec/08/us-data-centers. See also
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/national-data-center-moratorium/

Sage Cammers-Goodwin and Rosalie Waelen. How Much of Our Humanity Are We
Willing to Outsource to AI? March 27, 2024.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/how-much-humanity-outsource-ai/

John Lanchester. (2025). King of Cannibal Island. London Review of Books. 47: 23,
December 25. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n23/john-lanchester/king-of-cannibal-
island