Humans nowadays use AI for everything, it’s practically built into every website we use. For example, there’s Google that uses Gemini/AI Overviews and Bing that uses its AI tool named Copilot. When searching on Google, the first thing that pops up is an AI overview on the topic you search.
Artificial intelligence is a very divisive topic. People have different opinions on it as a whole and how it should be used. For example, an altercation with Mrs Maynard and some art students at Ballard who were upset over the use of AI on a journalism poster. After confronting Mrs Maynard about the AI use, they vandalized the poster, showing the opposition some students have to AI.
AI In Ballard
Using AI for schoolwork is a problem that is littered within schools. In some way or another, nearly every student at Ballard has used AI before, maybe on a project or in their personal lives. Using AI on school projects makes kids skip critical thinking and skip the brain storm process when doing work, which leads to reduced learning in classroom settings. We sent out a survey asking students at Ballard if they have ever used AI for anything school related or in their personal lives. Out of 98 responses, 89 of the students said they have used AI before. In the survey, students were asked to write out their opinion on AI. Typed out below are two anonymous responses.
¨I just think it’s a little too convenient. I think it might enable people to never learn certain things or stop making use of certain skills because AI can do it instantly, which includes skills that people get paid for, potentially costing people their jobs. I think it’s really fascinating what it’s capable of, but I also think it’s so capable that it wraps around to being a potential issue.¨-Ballard student
¨AI is ruining the environment and it’s unavoidable. It is ruining media literacy because everyone who thinks it’s great is becoming dependent on quick summaries instead of taking time out of their day [to do research]. We are rapidly approaching a water crisis because of just how much AI plants need. I despise it.¨ -Ballard student
Below is a statstic for how students feel about AI on a scale from 1-10, 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest.
In an interview with Mrs. Stepp, she stated that many students have used AI on assignments. Anytime this occurred, she said that she felt disbelief because, in her words, “the assignments are pretty easy, and I am available for help when students need support.” She also said that “AI is an easy way out” of schoolwork and “it’s not very well done, so it’s obvious”, meaning that it’s obvious when a student uses AI.
When asked if she had ever used AI before, she said, “I have worked with ChatGPT to get to know it” and “I have also fed in prompts of my own to show kids how bad the response could be.” She has even tried to see if there is a way to teach ethical AI use because Mrs. Stepp doesn’t expect AI to go anywhere anytime soon. This insinuates that AI isn’t going to go away in the near future, so we might as well try to find out how to use it in a safe and ethical way.
After Mrs. Stepp used ChatGPT, she said that she had a better grasp on it. She saw how the bot attempted to get to know the user, but continuously gave simple and generic answers to prompts. This ties in with her claiming that ChatGPT’s answers could be “bad”, meaning that the responses given would not be good enough to either pass as human or to get a good grade on an assignment if it didn’t get flagged as AI.
AI on Social Media
AI is also prominent on social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and especially on X (formally called Twitter). These platforms all heavily use AI with Chatbots, Algorithmic Polarization, Deepfakes and Impersonation, etc. All of these platforms are polluted with ¨AI slop¨, which means they are littered with low quality generated images and videos that have no meaning or quality behind them.
AI and How it Affects our Environment.
AI has major impacts on our environment since it uses tons of energy and water to keep itself sustained, which leads to increased carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming. AI cooling centers around the world consume hundreds of thousands of liters of freshwater everyday, draining how much water we are able to use to drink. It pollutes the water, adding chemicals and mirco metals, creating what’s called ¨wastewater¨. In 2025 alone, it´s estimated that between 312 billion and 765 billion liters of water were used just for AI. For comparison, 3 billion liters of water is about the same as 4,500–4,600 Olympic-sized swimming pools!
AI is detremental to our environment and our minds. It reduces our critcal thinking and leads to cognitive decline in society. AI is unsustainable and it has no regulation. It is unfortunate and grave that we contuine to ruin our planet for something we have functioned completely fine for years without.
