AI is taking over the world - just not in the way we expected it to

By Amirah Datwani

When you hear the phrase “AI takeover,” you may think of conspiracy theories, of outlandish visions of the future with robots roaming around, having power over humans, and becoming the superior beings of the Earth. This picture is reminiscent of futuristic sci-fi films, of media seen as purely fictional, and absurdly unrealistic.

But the AI takeover is happening, just not in the sensationalist way we’ve always imagined that kind of future to be like. Generative AI is bleeding into academia, poisoning the environment, and being heavily implemented into the workforce.

The most prominent form of generative AI that has been put to widespread use are chatbots like ChatGPT. It is especially popular amongst middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students as a shortcut when doing an assignment. On the surface, this seems like nothing but a quick and easy way to get assignments done without stress or an overwhelming workload, but the reality is a lot deeper than that. The constant use of generative AI to do a person’s work for them is reducing humans’ abilities to think for themselves, always needing a technological assistant to help them form an intellectual piece of work. It has also led to the conflation of punctuation commonly used in human-written content, like the em-dash (—) and semicolon (;) with AI-generated text, because generative AI is trained on already existing writing. Because of this association, when those who already use these types of punctuation do so in academic settings, the caution that has been generated due to student use of generative AI is misplaced onto students who have genuine knowledge of proper punctuation and know how to implement it into their writing.

Anti-intellectualism is already on the rise. By putting generative AI on a pedestal as some great representation of intelligence, we are undermining how the nuances of human existence are what makes profound and intellectual thinking so unique and groundbreaking. Experiencing the world as a human is essential to understanding it, and generative AI, no matter how advanced, cannot do that. The power of human thinking should not be underestimated or shoved aside in favour of programmed language models.

But our ability to think critically is not the only thing generative AI is ravaging. A great amount of computational power is required to keep generative AI software running, and this takes a lot of electricity use. The hardware that generative AI is trained and programmed with also requires cooling, which means a lot of water is used in the process. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the electricity consumption of AI data centers is extremely likely to reach 1,050 terawatt-hours by 2026.

Any time a person inputs a prompt or request into a generative AI model like ChatGPT, energy is consumed. Before Google implemented their generative AI model Gemini into their search results, one ChatGPT request used up as much energy as five Google searches — the difference in environmental impact is clear. 

ChatGPT and similar language models are also being used in more and more work-related contexts. Books that were AI-written, or partially AI-written, are becoming increasingly populous on Amazon and similar websites. Jobs that once belonged to humans are now being automated by AI. According to a Resume Templates survey, which was distributed to over 1,000 business owners in the USA, ninety percent of their companies have already integrated AI into their operations. Meanwhile, Final Round AI found that in the first six months of 2025, 77,999 job losses in the tech industry were directly connected to the adoption of AI.

Generative AI isn’t just a helpful tool — it’s dangerous.

When a piece of technology is so powerful that it not only takes jobs, but undermines the power of human thought, greatly affects the environment, and invasively infiltrates creative fields, it is impossible to deny that it is taking over the world. This takeover may not be characterised by science-fiction-esque revolutions, but it is a takeover nonetheless. The world has not been changed for the better. Generative AI has been introduced to a world already full of problems, and it is taking away the only thing that was once untouched — our humanity.