Bella Sturtevant of Leeds is a political psychology student at Thomas College.
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, governments internationally, nationally and on the state level are struggling to keep up with regulating it. In December of 2024, Gov. Janet Mills created an AI task force to see what steps need to be taken in Maine.
One of the main criticisms of AI is that it is taking away jobs from humans. While I was working at a Hannaford supermarket last year, the company started to install AI cameras above the self-checkouts that could detect if you were stealing. This means that humans aren’t needed as much for overseeing self-scan, though they still have to override mistakes and approve restricted sales.
Customers need human assistance for many reasons; some disabled customers are not able to access self-checkout and sometimes customers are just seeking human connection. For these reasons, AI cannot completely take over retail. Not only would it disproportionately take away job opportunities from young people, retired folks and economically disadvantaged people, but it would affect some of the customers directly by taking away their human connection and replacing it with machines.
If this spreads to other industries, there is a danger that human interaction will become less common until humans are struggling to communicate with each other in a basic way.
The most powerful argument against AI usage, however, is the severity of the environmental impacts. Any of the jobs that AI creates with data centers will create air pollution. According to the Harvard Business Review, data centers release a “digital smog” that contains pollutants “…linked to a variety of health outcomes, such as asthma, lung cancer, heart attacks and even premature deaths” and their high energy consumption strains the power grid, disrupting essential services such as hospitals and schools.
The argument that AI can lead to many medical advancements and scientific discoveries is irrelevant because using something that causes medical problems to solve other medical problems is not helpful.
The American health care system makes billions in profits every year while (according to the American Human Rights Initiative Foundation) over 500,000 Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills. A billion-dollar, for-profit industry like AI shouldn’t get to profit off of Americans who want adequate health care.
And the health impact, while extremely important, is dwarfed by the consequential water usage. Only 0.5% of Earth’s water is available fresh water. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, large AI cooling centers use “…up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people.”
Earth’s drinkable water is dwindling globally, but we don’t talk much about it in America because it hasn’t affected most of us yet. We need to put money and resources into figuring out what we will do when we’re out of usable water. When AI corporations put their resources into finding ways to cool their data centers without using our drinkable fresh water, there will be a lot more hope for humanity.
When evaluating AI’s potential benefits for Maine, we must also weigh its severe environmental and public health impacts. Gov. Mills’ AI task force is undertaking important work, and with the gubernatorial election approaching, voters should prioritize candidates who back the task force’s recommendations.
Maine’s pristine environment defines our state. AI must not compromise that.