AI’s Convenience Comes with Hidden Risks

Musfiqur Rahman

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how people work and how they collect information. It is changing education, medicine, the news media and communication. Within a few seconds, AI makes pictures, text, videos, research drafts and possible answers to many complex problems. Work that once took hours now takes little time with AI help. But behind this amazing progress, some important worries are building up.

People ask whether too much reliance on AI is weakening human thinking and creativity. They ask how much AI’s use of electricity and water is hurting the environment. They also ask how badly 1.5 billion to nearly 2 billion people, and more, would suffer if AI services suddenly stopped for some reason. Experts say AI now lets people finish many time consuming tasks in moments. Its use is growing everywhere, in a student’s assignment, a journalist’s report draft, an employee’s office work and a businessman’s plan.

People save time, work gets lighter and doors to new chances open. But behind this relief, a possible crisis is slowly building. If people hand over a big part of their thinking, analysis and creativity to machines, how much practice of their own talent will remain? How ready will people be if AI services suddenly stop? And who will pay the long term price for the huge electricity and water this technology needs to give answers in a few seconds?

AI’s biggest strengths are fast analysis of information, simple presentation of complex topics and automatic work on repeated tasks. It also holds promise in other fields. It can help diagnose disease in medicine and analyse weather and crop data in farming. It can support personal teaching in education and analyse forecasts in disaster response. Used well, it lets people do more with limited time and resources.

On this matter, Professor Mosaddek Hossain Kamal, a teacher in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Dhaka University, spoke to Inqilab. He said AI servers get hotter than usual, and water or liquid is needed to cool them. He said that if people cannot create an alternative, the environment will suffer a permanent harmful effect. He said, “We do not believe AI will disappear completely. But we cannot say that no crisis will arise either. We should use AI only as a tool to work in an easy, fast and comfortable way.”

He said it is never right to depend one hundred percent on technology. He said everything has good and bad sides. If we use the good sides and do not rely on the bad, it is surely beneficial to all. But he said bad people will surely not use the technology well. He said AI does not limit talent. Used the right way, it can make talent more progressive. He said that if we make policy with proper planning that suits long term use, it will play an important role in evaluation.

He said AI is now closely tied to our lives. So even with its bad sides, there is no way to cut it off fully. Used under control, technology is certainly good for all. Uncontrolled use harms people. He said the most important thing in using AI is the user’s own command. Mr. John McCarthy, the American computer scientist known as the father of AI, said many times that AI becomes a cause of great fear for humankind when people use it as a deadly weapon. Technology’s good and bad sides should be shown to everyone.

People should first learn about a matter and then take steps on it. AI will be most dangerous when it can build an AI stronger than itself. We should not stop a promising technology or invention because of a few bad uses. There are also environmental effects and unlimited electricity use in this technology. If we count 3 watts per image, about 3,000 kilowatts of electricity would be needed for one million images. At 3 to 30 millilitres of water per image, the total water could be about 3,000 to 30,000 litres or more.

As AI use grows, pressure on the infrastructure behind it also grows. Running and training AI needs large data centres, where countless servers need huge electricity. Cooling systems are needed to control the heat from servers. In some cases, they use water directly. Water is also needed in indirect steps such as power generation and chip making. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its 2025 report “Energy and AI” that data centres’ electricity use could nearly double by 2030. It could reach 945 terawatt hours a year.

The same report also pointed to the likely rise in data centres’ water use. A study the same year tested 17 image generation models. It found that electricity use can differ by up to 46 times between models. On the other hand, there is still no universal, direct measure of exactly how much water one image needs. If we count the water used in cooling data centres and in generating power, the water use per image could be a few millilitres.

Professor Mosaddek Hossain Kamal also spoke about using this technology without heavy water or electricity use. He said plans on this must be made, and some have already started, with several plans running to make the technology’s power use green. He said the chips cannot be kept cool with cooling fans alone, and some liquid must be used. He said a technology as powerful and widely used as AI cannot be changed at will. He said they have already planned to develop AI chips and make them green.

He said Bangladesh has a real shortage of electricity, so even if we want to, we cannot keep AI running with power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So they have started work on how to run AI with solar power and related power sources. Now suppose AI services suddenly stop for some reason, the internet goes down, or a major fault appears in the technology. What would happen then? People who use AI but understand the subject themselves can carry on with other methods.

But many people have handed almost all duties of checking facts, writing, calculation or decision making to technology, and many of them may face trouble. If AI stops, not everything will stop. But in technology dependent organisations, work may slow down and some services may suffer. Without backup plans, important work may run into complications. So along with AI, people need basic skills, their own power of thought and the ability to work without technology.

Experts say avoiding AI completely is not realistic, and blind reliance on it is not safe either. People must use AI as a helper in education and at work, check information, practise basic skills and protect personal data. Technology companies also hold a duty to be open about their energy and water use and to build eco friendly infrastructure. When a writer picks the topic, collects facts, builds the language and edits to create a piece of writing, the writer’s experience and thinking grow.

By contrast, if someone uses AI written text with small changes, the chance for that practice shrinks. Using AI may give quick results, but over the long term it can block skill building. All in all, AI saves people time, raises productivity and creates new chances. But suppose the price of that relief is less practice of thinking, shrinking creativity, too much reliance on technology or extra pressure on natural resources. Then people must rethink how they count progress. Technology should make human work easier, but it should not make human thinking, skills and future fully dependent on itself. Keeping this balance is now the biggest challenge.