You’ve heard from my husband, Eric Schmidt, about AI. Now here’s my take.

AI is everywhere, from search engines to text messages to dating profiles to homework, every word we tap prompts an AI to guess our intent. It’s no wonder then that the mention of it can inspire its own automatic response: graduates nationwide have been booing their commencement speakers, including my husband, former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, last month at the University of Arizona. 

While today’s college graduates were still in high school, artificial intelligence seemed to sit on the leading edge of what was possible in computing. It was being developed in a handful of large tech companies and by a small band of disorganized but ambitious start-ups, one of them, OpenAI, a nonprofit at the time.

Today, the danger AI poses to human societies has become a central concern across the world, so much so that Pope Leo XIV devoted his novella-length first encyclical to the subject. In part, that’s because a few highly capitalized private companies are now racing to capture their share of human enterprise, entertainment and education, openly fostering addiction of our attention and anticipating our future dependency.

This is happening at a cost to human experience, connection, engagement and life satisfaction we haven’t yet begun to calculate. At its worst, the impact is catastrophic for human cultures and everything that gives meaning to our lives.

Is intelligence really a utility that we will be expected to buy, as Open AI’s Sam Altman envisions? Does anyone want a future where we pay a subscription to do what makes us human—think, feel, strive, communicate—deepening inequality and damaging the environment while we’re at it?

For Eric and me—philanthropists seeking to advance the frontiers of science, invest in transformative technologies intended to address climate change, protect ocean health, and advance renewable energy and healthy food systems while protecting human rights—many of the developments in AI are worrisome.

The gargantuan data centers now rising around the country like faceless prison blocks are unapologetically polluting communities, raising ambient temperatures, emitting greenhouse gases, extracting sometimes scarce public water resources and usurping electrical power from the grid at a scale that dwarfs the needs of the communities around them. 

We’re told the rapid rollout of AI is meeting an urgent need. At the same time, numerous credible studies indicate troubling trends from the use of the technology—from poorer learning and cognitive development, to decreased emotional well being and manipulation by misinformation. For our troubles, AI consumes our inputs without compensating us, and it relies on the underpaid labor of moderators in some of the least developed nations in the world. 

Clearly, at this juncture, the continued investment in this technology—from massive flows of venture capital, to academic and federal research dollars, to companies choosing machines over people, often with little forethought, hoping for higher valuations that aren’t necessarily coming—should raise eyebrows. There are hard questions that remain unanswered about what it will mean in the future to be human, to develop values, to hold fast to morality, to learn, to do meaningful work.  

No single company or institution is responsible for the virtues and failings of AI systems in society, but we are all in positions to speak out on how AI should and should not be used. Let’s lead in the development of technologies that elevate and protect the human community and the values that bind us together. 

This is what we’re trying to do through philanthropy. We are applying AI to advance our mission of a healthy, resilient and secure world for all. AI makes it possible for scientists on missions supported by Schmidt Ocean Institute to more accurately identify new marine species. AI is analyzing existing FDA approved drugs to see if any of them might be useful in treating long COVID and other complex, chronic diseases. We support archaeologists using AI to uncover ancient artifacts that could rewrite what we know about the growth of human civilization, scientists working to make AI itself safer, ethical and more transparent, and Indigenous communities using AI to preserve languages on the brink of disappearing after centuries of oppression.

Will AI give us answers to the climate crisis? Will it cure cancer? Will it democratize knowledge? Only if we hold tight to the reins, direct it, recognize it for what it is—a tool, not a substitute, for us. It’s not magic, nor a monolith. 

Speaking out is a start. Today’s students can keep it up by protesting rubber-stamped data centers, voting out leaders who approve them without prioritizing human health and community needs, advocating for smart regulation and, fundamentally, learning what AI is and how it works to help shape it. 

Let’s start a new conversation about the appropriate use of computer based technology and the commitment we all need to make—to limit its dangers and to mitigate its harm—so that it might be possible to achieve the potential of appropriately scaled and regulated AI tools to actually support human well being and the health of our planet.

Wendy Schmidt is co-founder and president of the Schmidt Family Foundation and Schmidt Ocean Institute and co-founder of Schmidt Sciences.