Guardian readers: is humanity sacrificing clean water for chat therapy and fan fiction?
Readers of The Guardian are asking whether AI is worth the resources it consumes. A 2026 Harvard Business Review study identified the top four uses of AI: therapy and companionship, technical help, entertainment and chatter, and fan fiction. Educators report declining critical thinking among schoolchildren, and AI does not cure loneliness, it only masks it. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich is sounding the alarm: data centers drink water and burn electricity. For this?
AI-processed from Guardian; edited by Hamidun News
On 1 July 2026, The Guardian published readers' letters responding to its report on Erin Brockovich's campaign against AI data centers. The letter writers asked whether the real benefits of AI justify its enormous consumption of water and electricity.
How people actually use AI in 2026
A 2026 Harvard Business Review study identified the four most popular uses of language models. The result was unexpected for those who portray AI as the savior of medicine and science:
- Therapy and companionship: conversations for emotional support or to fight loneliness
- Technical help: debugging code, instructions, solving everyday problems
- Entertainment and chatter: jokes, wordplay, casual conversations with no specific purpose
- Fan fiction and storytelling: amateur stories, role-play, creative writing
Most AI queries are about emotional needs and entertainment, not scientific breakthroughs or productivity gains.
Does AI help with loneliness?
One of the most common uses is chatbots as "digital friends" for people who are socially isolated. The idea looks humane: AI is always ready to listen and offers support at any time of day.
The data, however, point the other way: this format does not reduce loneliness but rather masks it. Users get an imitation of conversation but do not develop real social skills.
"AI provides validation, but at the cost of atrophying the skills
needed to interact with real people."
British educators report a similar trend: teachers say that students who regularly use AI for schoolwork cope worse with independent analysis and argumentation. Critical thinking is gradually being delegated to the machine.
What are data centers paying for?
The context for this debate is The Guardian's 29 June 2026 report on Erin Brockovich's campaign against large AI data centers. The activist, who rose to fame in the 1990s for fighting industrial water pollution in California, now opposes a new kind of strain on ecosystems: data centers consume billions of liters of water to cool servers and add load to local power grids.
Readers pose an uncomfortable question: if most people use AI to write fan fiction and fight loneliness, is the environmental price worth it? "We can live without AI," the letter writers say, "but can we live without clean water?"
What this means
The debate over AI data centers is shifting from the technical to the ethical. Society is starting to demand an answer to a simple question: what is the real benefit of AI, and is it proportionate to its environmental costs? Until the industry can convincingly show that the benefits outweigh the resource consumption, pressure from activists and citizens will grow.
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Key Questions Answered
Does AI help with loneliness?
One of the most common uses is chatbots as "digital friends" for people who are socially isolated. The idea looks humane: AI is always ready to listen and offers support at any time of day. The data, however, point the other way: this format does not reduce loneliness but rather masks it. Users get an imitation of conversation but do not develop real social skills. "AI provides validation, but at the cost of atrophying the skills needed to interact with real people." British educators report a similar trend: teachers say that students who regularly use AI for schoolwork cop
What are data centers paying for?
The context for this debate is The Guardian's 29 June 2026 report on Erin Brockovich's campaign against large AI data centers. The activist, who rose to fame in the 1990s for fighting industrial water pollution in California, now opposes a new kind of strain on ecosystems: data centers consume billions of liters of water to cool servers and add load to local power grids. Readers pose an uncomfortable question: if most people use AI to write fan fiction and fight loneliness, is the environmental price worth it? "We can live without AI," the letter writers say, "but can we li
How people actually use AI in 2026?
A 2026 Harvard Business Review study identified the four most popular uses of language models. The result was unexpected for those who portray AI as the savior of medicine and science: Therapy and companionship: conversations for emotional support or to fight loneliness Technical help: debugging code, instructions, solving everyday problems Entertainment and chatter: jokes, wordplay, casual conversations with no specific purpose Fan fiction and storytelling: amateur stories, role-play, creative writing Most AI queries are about emotional needs and entertainment, not scienti
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