An Argument Against the Use of Artificial Intelligence by Teachers and Administrators for the Creation of Curriculum, Posters, or Other Educational and Informative Materials

Over the past years as a student in the Kingsway Regional School District, I have become increasingly disillusioned at the way that our teachers and administrators (hereinafter referred to as “District Personnel”) use artificial intelligence. I have seen example after example of District Personnel creating posters, flyers, images, and sometimes even assignments or tests and quizzes using AI, and frankly, this comes at great pain to myself and a number of other students at Kingsway. The hypocrisy of District Personnel telling students that it’s not okay to use AI in their work, and then using it themselves any chance they get is sickening, and if the district is going to tell us that AI is not acceptable in classwork, homework, assignments, or assessments, then it needs to make the same decision for its staff.

Not only is AI a spineless way to accomplish simple tasks, it also has a great negative impact on the environment. According to an article from The United Nations (UN News), the datacenters that large AI models rely on could consume up to 945 terawatt-hours of electricity annually by the year 2030. That’s three times the annual electricity consumption of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria each year combined, and those countries are home to more than 650 million people.

On top of this massive use of electricity, AI Datacenters also have enormous water footprints across multiple sources. Dr. Gianluca Guidi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow of Biostatistics at Harvard University, and Dr. Francesca Dominici, Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, published a paper in June of 2026 about the water consumption of hyperscale datacenters in the United States. In it, they went on to detail how datacenters have massive water footprints, both from the water that is being used to directly cool the datacenters, and the water that is being used in the electrical grid that the datacenter draws its power from.

The direct cooling water usage is primarily from local Hydrological Basins, which are natural sources of water that are formed by surface water draining and converging at a single point. Guidi and Dominici estimate that the amount of water being drawn from these local water basins by datacenters in the United States is approximately 74 GigaLiters, or 19.549 Billion gallons a year, which is more water than would be in 29,352 Olympic sized swimming pools.

While this may not seem like a big deal to some, there can be many adverse effects of overdraining these local hydrological basins and aqueducts. These basins are habitats for many creatures, and overdrawing from them can disrupt the local ecosystems and have a huge effect on biodiversity (Brabeck-Letmathe). Additionally, in many datacenters, water polluted with chemicals and minerals (cooling-tower blowdown water) is released back into the environment. This chemical discharge can contain biocides, PFAS Chemicals (also known as “Forever Chemicals”), heavy metals, refrigerants, salts, and other minerals. This can potentially contaminate well-waters, surface waters, and ground waters, which are the primary drinking source for most of the population (Saha, “Drinking Water”).

By continuing to leave the use of AI up to the discretion of school staff, the district is indirectly supporting these horrible effects on our world and ecosystems. In an effort to help the district still need to finish writing here