(This essay was inspired because the author is currently taking the course Machine Learning Foundations and had a small talk of a GenZ Insurance Advisor, in one of the coffee shops; where the use of AI from a perspective of nonchalantness was freely discussed in an open-ended exchange of ideas)
There’s a version of this conversation that feels very Gen Z, esp those in the higher echelons of education — those Gen Zs who're "woke" and constantly seeking "information"to better humanity and the environment.
You’re in a university "tambayan"— laptops open, someone running a group chat debate about sustainability. Someone says, “We need to be more mindful with AI. It consumes energy.” Heads nod. It sounds right. It feels responsible.
But then, five minutes later, someone’s prompting an AI to generate a video for a class presentation. Another is using it to summarize readings. Someone else is creating images for a campaign pitch. No one thinks twice — because the impact isn’t visible.
That’s the strange thing about AI—it feels weightless. Walang usok. Walang ingay. No factory. No physical mess. Just a clean interface and a blinking cursor asking what you want - at least from a user's vantage point. But behind that cursor is something very real.
Every time you ask AI to generate something—a video, a set of images, even long-form text—you’re tapping into a network of data centers. Massive, always-on infrastructures that process enormous amounts of data, cooled continuously, powered constantly. These centers don’t sleep. They don’t slow down. They respond, and every response costs energy.
It’s not dramatic in isolation. One prompt won’t change the climate. One AI-generated video won’t tip the scale. But that’s not how systems work. The cost is cumulative, quiet; distributed across millions of users who all think they’re just doing something small. Which, in a way, they are.
But small actions, when scaled, stop being small. There’s a kind of irony here. The same generation pushing hardest for sustainability—reducing plastic use, advocating for climate policies, questioning corporate practices—is also the most fluent in AI. The most dependent on it. The most likely to integrate it seamlessly into daily life. And maybe that’s where the tension sits. Not in rejection, but in regulation. Because no one is realistically suggesting we stop using AI. It’s too embedded already—in education, in work, in creativity. The question is not whether to use it, but how much, and for what.
Do we generate a full AI video for a two-minute classroom report that could have been done with existing footage? Do we prompt endlessly for slight variations of the same output? Do we treat AI as convenience or as necessity? These aren’t moral questions. They’re behavioral ones.
It’s easy to underestimate invisible systems. We tend to care more about what we can see. A plastic bottle thrown on the ground feels wrong because it’s immediate. It occupies space. It lingers. But an AI request leaves no trace in your room. Walang kalat - just output; but the cost has simply moved elsewhere.
In data centers. In energy grids. In cooling systems working overtime so the illusion of effortlessness can remain intact. And maybe what Gen Z is beginning to sense—especially those in academic spaces where ideas circulate faster than conclusions—is that sustainability, is no longer just about physical waste. It’s about digital consumption; about restraint in environments where excess feels harmless. It’s not about guilt. It’s about awareness.
You don’t need to stop using AI. But you might start noticing how you use it, the extra prompts you didn’t need, the outputs you generated just to see if you could, the convenience you chose over effort—not once, but repeatedly, beecause the real impact isn’t in a single decision - it’s in the pattern. And patterns, once established, tend to scale.
So maybe the conversation isn’t about restricting AI. Maybe it’s about maturing with it - understanding that even the most frictionless tools still carry weight—just not in ways we’re used to seeing. And learning, slowly, to ask not just what can AI do for me? But what does it cost when I ask it to - "just make it"?
- billymacdeus
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