This syllabus week, it’s time for the environmental implications of artificial intelligence to take center stage. It happens in every course. My history professor will gaze wearily at the class and heave a hefty sigh rife with apprehension before instructing us to turn to the last page of our syllabus. We scroll through the PDF on our laptops until we find the subheading “AI Policy,” the complexity of these eight letters concealed behind a sleek 12- point Times New Roman font underlined in black.
About four years ago, on November 30, 2022, OpenAI released an early demo of its generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, ChatGPT. Five days later, co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, claimed over one million people had used the technology.
In 2026, ChatGPT and AI usage feel ubiquitous. Journalists grapple with the implications of AI in op-eds, business owners eagerly implement the newest generative AI technology to maximize their profits, and tourists’ iPhones gleam with itineraries generated from a chatbot, restaurant and museum recommendations spilling out faster than they can say “ciao.”
In universities, educators confront a challenge different from anything they have seen before. AI is now a major focus when it comes to syllabus week, earning its own paragraph or even a full page.
Professors never cease to pause — sometimes for dramatic effect, sometimes out of apprehension, often begrudgingly — before raising the question of artificial intelligence use in their course.
The class discussion that follows is predictable. One student will wax lyrical about artificial intelligence short-circuiting the creative process; another will raise concerns over the misinformation that often spews from chatbots; a third will say that AI can never replicate the unique tone of a scholar who spent six months digging through archives instead of six minutes on ChatGPT. Conversations about misinformation and well-researched, human academic writing are all fine and well. In fact, they are very important. I, too, am deeply concerned about the implications of AI in academia, especially in creative disciplines that rely heavily on writing, like the humanities.
I don’t think we should stop having these kinds of discussions — about the moral implications of AI on creativity, originality, and academic rigour. But I am worried that AI’s impact on the environment is being entirely left out of classroom conversations.
In 2025, the MIT Technology Review published a comprehensive assessment of AI’s energy footprint, bluntly laying out the real environmental implications of the technology. The authors spoke to dozens of experts who measured AI’s energy and water usage and then analyzed their findings to reveal exactly how generative AI systems work.
For one, before a user can prompt ChatGPT to write a research paper or draft an email, AI models are trained in data centres. These centers are incredibly energy intensive, often requiring millions of gallons of water every day for cooling technology to prevent overheating. In 2023, data centres worldwide consumed 175 billion litres of water and training OpenAI’s GPT-4 model alone consumed about 50 gigawatt-hours of energy — the same amount needed to power San Francisco for three days.
By 2030, global data centres powering AI are projected to consume about 945 terawatt-hours of electricity, according to a United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health report published in June. That’s nearly three times the annual electricity use of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria combined.
While data centers guzzle enormous amounts of water and energy, about 90 per cent of AI’s power use comes from online everyday user requests, according to Miriam Aczel, co-author of the UN study and environmental policy researcher. AI operational requests (like prompting a chatbot to write a LinkedIn post) require substantial amounts of energy, estimated to take up to 10 times more energy than a Google search. While the exact amount of energy used varies based on the prompt, it is clear that the average chatbot query is not as harmless as one might think.
Artificial intelligence is anything but artificial in its very real, measurable environmental costs. Scientific researchers, journalists, and think tanks are spelling this out like flashing stoplights that are impossible to miss.
So why are we not talking about it in the classroom?
Why have we stopped thinking about our natural habitat when it comes to AI? Have we all gotten so swept up in the ethics of using artificial intelligence in the world of academia that we have forgotten about the natural world right in front of us?
It’s time to steer the discussion about AI away from the abstract and toward the concrete. This week, when your professor will inevitably ask your thoughts on artificial intelligence, consider raising your hand to join the discussion.
Your professor may be surprised. They may respond in earnest, or even use your comment as a launchpad for a larger conversation, asking the rest of the class what they think.
Yes, creativity, critical thinking and authenticity in academia matter. But so does the environment. It’s time to start acting like it.