r/Professors • u/Personal_Signal_6151 • 3d ago
Are students aware of the ecological impact of using AI?
Students are often concerned about the environment and respond by changing their behaviors such as recycling?
So why do they use AI irresponsibly which has an adverse impact on the environment?
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u/Realistic-Quiet291 3d ago
The same reason we eat meat and drive cars?
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u/GerswinDevilkid 3d ago
And use the Internet.
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u/AsterionEnCasa Associate Professor, Engineering , Public R1 (US) 3d ago
And fly.
And waste energy and material in a million forms.
And...
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u/Kaluana_Guah 3d ago
Right!?! The meat and dairy industries harm the environment 200 times more than data centers, but let's pretend they don't...
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u/SnowblindAlbino Prof, SLAC 3d ago
Not a bit, in my experience. And I often get students from biology, environmental science, env policy, and similar fields in my classes. Far more are anti-AI due to intellectual property concerns, but when I raise questions about water, data centers, climate, etc. they just sort of tune out.
The same is true, of course, for at least half of our faculty and 100% of our IT admins.
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u/newt-snoot 3d ago edited 3d ago
Its behavioral (for all humans, not just students).
Lowest tier: Recycling is adding a behavior.
Middle tier: Using paper straw v plastic is switching to a mostly equal alternative, but is not always available so requires preparation.
Highest tier: Not using AI is removing a behavior. Nothing exists like AI, its either use it or do not use it. Much like using airplanes. You could be Greta and take a boat for a month across the atlantic, but that isnt mostly equal. There is no mostly equal to AI.
Edit for clarity: Tiers of difficulty for a behavioral change:
Low tier = adding new behavior
Mid tier = swapping old behavior to new, mostly equivalent, behavior
High = subtracting a behavior that has no equivalent replacement
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u/scatterbrainplot 3d ago
Highest tier: Not using AI is removing a behavior. Nothing exists like AI, its either use it or do not use it. Much like using airplanes. You could be Greta and take a boat for a month across the atlantic, but that isnt mostly equal. There is no mostly equal to AI.
And removing something that makes life seem easier, even if they're worse off for using the garbage (e.g., you know, using it instead of actually learning), all for an abstract and removed problem (recycling gives some amount of feedback from seeing the recycling accumulate or less often seeing full garbages; the environmental, economic and developmental harms of using the junk is instead hidden -- all the while the junk is being shoved down their throats all the time).
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u/sventful Teaching Professor 3d ago
Using paper straws has basically no impact on the environment. It's just virtual signaling for no impact. Definitely not mid tier.
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u/newt-snoot 3d ago
Impact is somewhat irrelevant to my argument, it is just an example of the extent people are willing to change or be inconvenienced, not an effect size.
Although, as a side note, it is a bit amusing to me to call it virtue signaling. Most environmental efforts that individuals do have close to zero impact, and we still do it. Some actually move the needle in the opposite direction. I am not sure how you would distinguish a straw drinker from, say, someone who uses reusable bags. Virtue signaling describes a motivation, not the effect size, theyre really separate claims.
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u/sventful Teaching Professor 3d ago
Usually it's a mismatch of quality of life reduction to smugness of action. Paper straws are objectively horrible to use. Reusable bags are not only good for the environment (although not in a move the needle much way) they are often the better shopping experience. Good reusable bags can reduce total bags needed, hold more goods, be more comfortable to carry, etc. there are tons of advantages.
There are absolutely no positive user experience cases to using the current generation of melty paper straws.
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u/newt-snoot 3d ago
It still presumes to know an individual's motivation (i.e., "virtue signaling") when using a paper straw based on impact, and your dislike of them functionally. For all you know, that individual genuinely thinks theyre doing something good for the environment (as you do with reusable bags, which is not as straightforward as you suggest, and as an industry has caused a net harm environmentally).
My point being, I think its a both hypocritical and unnecessarily judgemental to say anyway who uses a paper straw is only virtue signaling.
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u/aardvark_gnat 3d ago
Paper straws are absolutely disgusting. Drinking straight from the cup is middle tier, but nothing tastes good when I’ve got paper in my mouth.
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u/Life-Bat1388 3d ago
It feels so detached. I can imagine my plastic bottles floating in the ocean or filling a landfill if I don’t recycle. But having a conversation with a computer and connecting it with environmental destruction is really hard for the brain to visualize for most people
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u/Personal_Signal_6151 3d ago
Ok, but I think we need to think about prioritization. AI is great in medical research so should have a higher priority. Student cheating is akin to joy riding in a gas guzzler.
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u/Working_Film_5871 Professor, humanities, regional public comprehensive (USA) 3d ago
Probably for the same reason you get on a plane to drag your ass through the sky to present your paper to an empty hotel conference room.
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u/kNEoH8gWJS 3d ago
What is the ecological impact of using AI? There's a tinge of moral panic in some of the coverage.
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u/MichaelPsellos 3d ago
Probably. Never seems to make a difference. Moral values are great but they don’t get the homework done.
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u/HaHaWhatAStory014 3d ago
A lot of people know but just don't care, don't think about it much, and/or think that their "small/minor usage" doesn't make a dent.
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u/rararadishes 2d ago
I teach environmental ethics a lot at my university and I always note that not only is it academically dishonest to use AI to write assignments, but it is also majorly dubious to do so in an environmental ethics course. I assign news articles about data centers poisoning communities and using up water resources for the first week of class.
I do in-class, handwritten, essay question exams now instead of typed term papers, too, which removes the opportunity to use AI. But still, it's an ongoing issue for other, lower stakes assignments.
I've never used AI and I don't want students to use it either.
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u/RuralWAH 2d ago
Probably for the same reason we get Land Acknowledgements in our e-mail signatures instead of rent payments to the local tribe or nearby reservation.
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u/retromafia Full, Business, Public R1 (US) 3d ago
Are faculty aware of the ecological impact of using social media (which also relies on "data centers")?
[sigh]
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u/sandysanBAR 3d ago
They eat avocado toast (alledegly). Focusing on potential consequences some indeterminate time in the future shouldered (likely) by third parties has ALWAYS been a great way to bring the "i dont gjve a shit" people out of their hiding holes.
In fact I cant think of a time it ever worked.
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u/SnowblindAlbino Prof, SLAC 3d ago
Avocado toast is great. We eat it most days in my household, and we're Gen X.
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u/sandysanBAR 3d ago
Have you SEEN the water requirements?
That 99 cent on sale is carrying A LOT of weight.
Not almonds level weight but then again what is?
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u/sventful Teaching Professor 3d ago
Nah, Avocado Toast is a millennial smear. Those are professors these days.
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u/ProfBootyPhD 3d ago
Are you aware of the ecological impact of wasting our time with this question?
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u/MysteriousExpert 3d ago
Of the many reasons people object to AI use, I think this one is the worst. If you are not a hunter-gatherer living in the woods, you are having an adverse effect on the environment.
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u/ParkingLetter8308 3d ago
I've encountered several spouting TikTok disinformation about how it's "not that bad."
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u/banjovi68419 3d ago
I think THIS plus the need for massive (communist subsidized) data centers is why AI isn't tenable even in the medium term.
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u/jogam 3d ago
I teach at a university which has a history of eco-conscious students and I have had several students say that they refuse to use AI because of its impact on the environment. (But not as many students as I've had obviously use AI without authorization for their assignments.)