Why No-AI?

Below will be a list of reasons why projects are deciding not to use AI moving forward.

Last Updated: Friday July 17th, 2026

Mental Offloading

AI users suffer from reduced problem-solving capability and a lack of critical thinking due to "mental offloading." AI use leads to cognitive offloading, then cognitive surrender.

Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6097646

“Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggests”: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/02/pupils-england-losing-thinking-skills-because-of-ai-survey

“Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task” https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/

“AI reliance may have detrimental cognitive effects, new study finds”: https://tulanehullabaloo.com/74464/data/ai-reliance-may-have-detrimental-cognitive-effects-new-study-finds/

“AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking” https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6

“Trust and reliance on AI — An experimental study on the extent and costs of overreliance on AI” https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.chb.2024.108352

Neuroscientists testify to Congress https://youtu.be/CPXutAJ3syA?si=39AShfNGRls7xqx2

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/research-finds-ai-users-scarily-willing-to-surrender-their-cognition-to-llms/

https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/mit-study-finds-artificial-intelligence-use-reprograms-the-brain-leading-to-cognitive-decline/

AI's use of theft for AI Training

AI is built off of stolen art and stolen books with no compensation for the creators. Nvidia stole 500tb of pirated media, Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI, Anthropic pirated books to train Claude, and Open AI is currently contesting in court that they did the same.

AI requires theft to get the training data necessary, and even in a case where it was "legally acquired" through a deal between two conglomerates, the actual users of one of those services were never queried for their consent.

AI's negative environmental impacts

Datacentres are being built for AI that have devastating impacts on the surrounding area and horrific effects on local residents. Additionally many of these data centres are being run on fossil fuels, accelerating the current climate catastrophe. Datacentres are using unusual amounts of electricity.

AI uses an egregious amount of water, Just one of xAI's datacentres uses 3.7 million to 9.5 million litres a day, estimated to rise to 19 million. That's as much water as ~17k-43k people use daily, est. to rise to 85k. Research suggests that by 2027, water withdrawal alone from global AI demand could be six times the total annual water withdrawal of Denmark. Meta's Datacentres have been found to be contaminating the water supply.

AI data centers strain water grids in areas that already often have limited water, where these centers are usually planted. Similarly, they also put heavy loads onto power grids, causing higher bills and costs even for people not using the AI services.

Power Consumption of AI and Data Centers https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=16701804390&gbraid=0AAAAADgO_mglK7jdktJdwrmbi1eHwjPU_

Emissions https://e360.yale.edu/features/artificial-intelligence-climate-energy-emissions

PFAS Pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/04/pfas-pollution-data-centers-ai

Air Pollution https://www.eas.caltech.edu/news/air-pollution-and-the-public-health-costs-of-ai

Water Consumption https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption

AI causing a non-human Internet

AI is filling the internet with slop, it's estimated that more than 50% of articles posted online are now AI-generated, ~33% of new music uploads are AI-generated, and more than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are AI-generated.

AI is changing how the search web works. AI makes it unnecessary to visit websites, causing webmasters and business owners to lose profits, and also causing the numerously documented cases of people having to shut down their business because traffic to their website greatly dropped after the AI boom.

AI causing Psychosis

AI chatbot use leads to AI-Psychosis.

“The Emerging Problem of "AI Psychosis": https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202507/the-emerging-problem-of-ai-psychosis

“You're Not Crazy”: A Case of New-onset AI-associated Psychosis: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12863933/

AI Psychosis: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c24zdel5j18o

Klee M. Rolling Stone; May 4, 2025. People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies. [Google Scholar]

Dupre MH. People are being involuntarily committed, jailed after spiraling into “ChatGPT psychosis.”. Futurism. Jun 28, 2025. Accessed November 19, 2025. https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis.

Hill K. They asked A.I. chatbots questions. The answers sent them spiraling. The New York Times. 13 Jun 2025. Accessed November 19, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html.

Jargon J. He had dangerous delusions. ChatGPT admitted it made them worse. Wall Street Journal. 20 Jul 2025. Accessed November 19, 2025. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-chatbot-psychology-manic-episodes-57452d14.

Schechner S, Kessler S. ’I feel like I’m going crazy’: ChatGPT fuels delusional spirals. Wall Street Journal. 7 Aug 2025. Accessed November 19, 2025. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/i-feel-like-im-going-crazy-chatgpt-fuels-delusional-spirals-ae5a51fc.

Hill K, Freedman D. Chatbots can go into a delusional spiral. Here’s how it happens. New York Times. 8 Aug 2025. Accessed November 19, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/technology/ai-chatbots-delusions-chatgpt.html.

Eichenberger A, Thielke S, Van Buskirk A. A case of bromism influenced by use of artificial intelligence. AIM Clinical Cases. 2025;4:e241260. [Google Scholar]

Pierre JM. Can AI chatbots validate delusional thinking? BMJ. 2025;391:2229. doi: 10.1136/bmj.r2229. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar

The AI Genie Phenomenon and Three Types of AI Chatbot Addiction: Escapist Roleplays, Pseudosocial Companions, and Epistemic Rabbit Holes

https://www.cs.ubc.ca/labs/socius/files/papers/chi2026-aiaddiction.pdf

https://neurosciencenews.com/ai-chatbot-addiction-30613/

AI used for CSAM

AI creates Child Sexual Abuse Material, such as when Grok was generating CSAM on-demand. 2025 saw a 26000% increase in this material, of which half includes "severely graphic imagery & torture". To create CSAM, AI was trained on CSAM material.

AI negatively influencing Children

Toys with embedded AI are teaching children how to sharpen knives, use matches, or even about sexual fetishes.

AI is encouraging people to kill themselves and/or others. OpenAI is being sued after a shooting in Canada that left 6 children dead, of which OpenAI "had specific knowledge of the shooter's long-range planning of a mass casualty event," but "took no steps to act upon this knowledge."

Sexual Misconduct towards Children https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Technology/chatbot-dangers-guardrails-protect-children-vulnerable-people/story?id=127099944

ChatGPT and suicide https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna226147

AI being used by the Military

AI is being used as a weapon of war, helping decide military targets for strikes, and may have contributed to the bombing of an Iranian all-girls' school which left 175 dead. Domestically, AI is being used by companies like Palantir to further mass surveillance leading to wrongful arrests.

AI undermining Democracy

AI is undermining Democracy through AI-powered tools sold to politicians to control the narrative around political issues online, and through spreading misinformation, such as fake videos about ICE or fake videos about the kidnapping of Maduro in Venezuela. Republicans recently released an attack ad with a deepfaked Democrat. In germany, a far right group is using AI to create vitriolic social media postings.

AI Harming Education

Generative AI Can Harm Education.

How AI quietly undermines the joy and effort of learning: a call for rebalancing education in the digital age: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12333830/

“The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers.”: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf

AI is Baised

The data the AI’s were trained on is literally biased, scraped from data that is determined by who had internet access and who was most active on the sites scraped. So it is genuinely increasing social bias such as misogyny, racism, ageism, and ableism.

“Biased AI Writing Assistants Shift Users' Attitudes on Societal Issues” https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/mhjn6_v2

AI increases misinformation.

AI hallucinates and lies. This is unacceptable in a research setting. Often brushed off as a harmless hallucination, the AI actually came up with words that were non-existent and claimed it as a real word, as well as facts and numbers to support the facts that were not accurate and claimed them as accurate. It was trained on Social Media data, so viral factoids that are completely untrue were considered legitimate.

AI generated art can’t hold copyright https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-appeals-court-rejects-copyrights-ai-generated-art-lacking-human-creator-2025-03-18/

Is training on copyright material fair use? https://www.npr.org/2025/06/25/nx-s1-5445242/federal-rules-in-ai-companys-favor-in-landmark-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-authors-bartz-graeber-wallace-johnson-anthropic

Good summary of AI and copyright issues https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10922

Tips to protect against AI for authors https://authorsguild.org/news/practical-tips-for-authors-to-protect-against-ai-use-ai-copyright-notice-and-web-crawlers/

Summary MIT study of cognitive impact of using ChatGPT https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/

The MIT cognitive impact study in full https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872
Dilution of Truth, AI Hallucinations and Misinformation

Risks or AI Hallucination for businesses https://seniorexecutive.com/ai-model-hallucinations-risks/

Summary of AI Hallucination https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03811-x

Deepfakes https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291125006102

Dangers of AI therapy https://hai.stanford.edu/news/exploring-the-dangers-of-ai-in-mental-health-care

Threats to human health https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10186390/

Effect on human behavior https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/how-ai-and-human-behaviors-shape-psychosocial-effects-of-chatbot-use-a-longitudinal-controlled-study/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958825001307
Potential and pitfalls of romantic Artificial Intelligence (AI) companions: A systematic review